NEW DELHI: A three member committee of non-Sikh opposition members of parliament has indicted the police for committing atrocities on the people including village elders and women in Batala police station.
In a detailed report on police brutality and lawlessness in Batala, submitted recently to the president of India, the committee demanded a high level of judicial inquiry into the cases of police brutality torture and humiliation of villagers.
“We got a firsthand glimpse of state terrorism and it is obvious that functionaries of the state who perpetrate the crimes against innocent persons are incapable of a disciplined effort to deal with others
indulging in equally reprehensible crimes,” it said and demanded immediate action against the Batala police.
During their tour of the area, the committee consisting of K.P. Unikrishnana, Ashok Nath Verma, and Muni Ram Sethia visited two villages of Mataur and Kasiwal and met several residents including retired army officers to record statements about brutal police behayiours.
The accounts narrated by the people were consistent and corroborative the report said. On January 10, the notorious SSP Gobind Ram with about 500 personal of Punjab police and Border Security Force, rounded up all 500 males in Sanchur village and all Sikhs between the ages of 18 and 80 at a focal point.
They were made to lie down and beaten with belts and bamboo sticks. They also stripped naked the wife of one Avtar Singh, a local electrician in front of the assembled villagers. Two policemen kept an iron rod on her legs and stood on it, oblivious of her cries of pain.
The police chief Gobind Ram compelled the assembled villagers to shout the filthiest abuses against’ various prominent persons, particularly against Surjit Kaur, a woman activist of the Akali Dal and her two daughters.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 21, 1989
