What happens in the interrogation centers can be seen in the interview with Iqbal Singh carried out by Ram Narain Kumar of the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab. Iqbal Singh had been tortured at one of the interrogation centers. Learning the methods of torture which is carried out at these places is a hair raising experience and one has to think how a human being can fall to such depths of bestiality. We reproduce excerpts of the interview carried out by Ram Narain Kumar.

Ram Narain Kumar: Do you recognize the person who picked you up?

Iqbal Singh: I recognize one of them, DSP Joginder Singh. There were 15 or 20 of them.

Ram Narain Kumar: How come you recognize Joginder Singh alone?

Iqbal Singh: He was sitting next to me in the car and was one of the people who threw me into a cell and interrogated me. I learnt his name in the course of the interrogation.

Ram Narain Kumar: Where did they take you immediately after abducting you?

Iqbal Singh: To the Faridkot CIA Interrogation Center.

Ram Narain Kumar: When and how did you find cut that you were in the custody of the CIA staff Faridkot?

Iqbal Singh: At the very onset of my interrogation a police officer asked me if I knew where I was. I said no. He said that I was in the custody of the CIA staff at Faridkot who have forced many dangerous extremists to confess their crimes. He also asked me if I knew who I was talking to, and when I replied in negative, he said that he was Sham Sunder whose very name stuck fear in the minds of terrorists.

Ram Narain Kumar: Can you recapitulate the development of your interrogation as close to the actual events as possible?

Iqbal Singh: Yes. When I reached the CIA interrogation center at Faridkot, I was ushered into a room, they opened my blindfold I was made to crouch on the floor while DSP Joginder Singh and Inspector Sham Sunder sat on chairs. They threw a barrage of questions at me. Who were the militants I maintained contacts with? Which of them took shelter at my home? Where did I hide their weapons? Which crimes had I committed with them, and other similar questions? I told them the truth. I had no links with any militants and neither did they visit my home. J neither hid weapons nor had I committed any terroristic crime. # told them of my association with Avtar Singh Sidhu, a leader of the youth Akali Dal and those we were friends also told them of my ordeals ever since I went to Patiala in June 1984… Narrated my entire story to my tormentors and requested them to make enquiries to satisfy themselves whether I was speaking the truth or not. But they proceeded to torture me. I was blindfolded once again. My clothes were torn off and I was stripped naked. My turban was used to tie my hands behind my back.

My right leg was squeezed into a hole of a wooden block which was suspended from the ceiling. I stood balancing myself on my left leg. After half an hour, my leg was removed from the wooden block and I was suspended upside down from the ceiling and beaten. After some time I was taken down. The toes on my feet were tied together as also were my hands to my back. Then was made to lie down with my back on the floor. A heavy iron pipe was put on my legs. Four policemen got on it while two of them held’ the pole tight across my legs from both ends and rotated it up and down. My thigh muscles ruptured.

They started pulling my legs apart until I felt them ripping out from my pelvis. Then they started kicking me in the groin. I became unconscious. I woke up in a cell, I don’t know after how long.

Ram Narain Kumar: Do you recognize the persons who tortured you?

Iqbal Singh: Yes, some of them I do. Inspector Shyam Sunder, Inspector Harbans Singh Ustad, and DSP Joginder Singh carried out the torture with many of their subordinates helping them.

Ram Narain Kumar: Did you come across SSP Gobind Ram in the course of your interrogation?

Iqbal Singh: SSP Gobind Ram came to the CIA center a day after I had gone through the first round of torture. Waving his revolver at us the detainees he shouted that if we did not confess to our crimes he would personally shoot all of us. He directed my interrogation to recommence. He stood by and gave instructions. First he ordered chili powder to be stuffed into my anus. Then he had petrol poured into it. They started working on my legs all over again. I told the SSP that I was innocent and that I was being tortured unjustifiably. I fainted soon after.

Ram Narain Kumar: How long were you tortured in this manner?

Iqbal Singh: This pattern repeated itself every day for one week. Very often the torturers would tum up late at nights in a drunken state and order us out of the lockup into the interrogation room. In one week I was reduced to a state of a corpse insensitive to further infliction of pain. My legs were swollen thick. I was delirious and ran high temperature.

One day I caught the words of an officer, “If he does not regain consciousness, kill him and throw him into a canal.” After some days Shyam Sunder came up to me in the lockup. He admitted that my interrogation had been too severe and unnecessary. “But you must try to recover soon; this will be in your interest. You may live if you can be on your legs.” But my legs had been mutilated and I saw no chance of my ever being up on them.

Ram Narain Kumar: Why were you kept in custody so long after Shyam Sunder had admitted that your torture had been unnecessary?

Iqbal Singh: I had been tortured too severely. They were not sure that I would overcome my injuries to live. If I had succumbed, an encounter would have been faked away to explain my death…

Ram Narain Kumar: Were you able to observe the conditions of your co detainees?

Iqbal Singh: There were 18 detainees in the lockup when I got there. They had all been picked up in the same manner and had suffered the same fate.

Ram Narain Kumar: Do you know their names?

Iqbal Singh: I know five or six names. One was Kulwant Singh. He has been in illegal custody for more than two months. He was abducted from village Moham in Ferozepur District.

Ram Narain Kumar: Is he still in the lockup?

Iqbal Singh: Yes, he is still in the lockup. There used to be another man Balwinder Singh from Fatehgarh. He used to be a driver in Calcutta. He had gone to Talwandi Sabo in the occasion of Baisakhi (festival) where he was picked up. One 14 year old boy who was known by his nickname Kale, was also there. He too had been picked up from Talwandi Sabo. The boy comes from Goniyala Mandi village near Bathinda. He has suffered inhuman torture. Then there is a boy from the Bagha Purana village near Moga. His name is Jarnail Singh, he has been in custody for the last eight months. He has neither been produced before a magistrate nor detained under any special law.

Ram Narain Kumar: How old is he?

Iqbal Singh: Must be around 19.

Iqbal Singh: Gurbaj Singh from Taran Taran and another boy Geja, also from Taran Taran. Both have been in custody for the last two months. Geja’s associate Manjit Singh was taken out and killed in a fake encounter the day I was brought to the lockup.

Ram Narain Kumar; How many detainees did you see taken out of the lockup to be killed in fake encounters?

Iqbal Singh: One or two detainees almost every day.

Ram Narain Kumar: How do you know that they were killed?

Iqbal Singh: Those marked for elimination were segregated from the rest of us. They used to be taken out at nights, never to return.

Ram Narain Kumar: Are you a witness of the torture of other detainees in the custody of CIA Faridkot?

Iqbal Singh: After about 25 days of illegal arrest, when the injuries on my body were more or less healed, I was asked to tend to buffaloes which belonged to Inspector Shyam Sunder. I was to wash and feed them.

Ram Narain Kumar: You mean the buffaloes were tended right inside the police station?

Iqbal Singh: Yes they were. One day while I was washing the buffaloes I watched two detainees being tortured. Hot iron rods were being incised into their calf muscles. They were screaming, they were tortured to death. I got scared and hid myself in the cell.

Ram Narain Kumar: What did the officer at the CIA center, Faridkot tell you before you were freed from their custody?

Iqbal Singh: I was warned that if I talked to anyone about my arrest or torture, or made complaints before a court of law, my entire family would be eliminated. SSP Gobind Ram had given the same warning to my mother when she met him in the morning.

Article extracted from this publication >> April 6, 1990