New Delhi — The gruesome tale of inhuman torture of Sikhs by police echoed poignantly in a Delhi court when the death of Mohinder Singh in police custody was announced and his two Sikh companions in mutilated condition were produced. Mohinder Singh and his friends were arrested from his residence in Delhi for their alleged involvement in the recent bomb explosions. Police maintained that the suspect had died of the injuries received by him while resisting arrest. The doctors attending on dying Mohinder Singh, however, disclosed that he had died because of the bursting of blood veins in the brain.
Police contention was falsified when Mohinder’s companions were produced in the court. They could stand only with some support and they looked so mutilated as if they had been mauled by a wild animal.
Torture in police custody is a common practice in India and there is an instance galore of suspects dying of the tortures. So dehumanized is the system that if some international agency were to conduct an objective probe into the methods employed by the Indian police, the world will be shocked out of their senses and unanimously proclaim that Hitler’s torture cells appear no more than classroom punishments as compared to the horrid savagery practiced in India particularly against the Sikhs. So deplorable is the system that a judge of the Indian Supreme Court, Justice Mullah, was once constrained to observe in one of his judgments that ‘Indian police is an organized band of criminals and dacoit’s recruited and paid by the State.’ But who would stand up for individuals or even for a persecuted community and earn the displeasure of a country that claims to be the leader of the third world.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 17, 1985
