Why have you been arrested?
Because there is not a shred of Democracy left in this country. This regime has turned out to be totally fascist and such regimes immediately pounce upon people Who apprise others of their rights. This was expected. The government could not tolerate a man who spoke out against the abuse of human rights,
Is your family being harassed?
The police ransacked my whole house, My telephone is kept under Surveillance. Since my arrest, were received no mail, when on an average I receive at least 12 letters a day, By all these actions, the police are only lending ordnance to the Amnesty report. How do you react to your handcuffing?
To be honest, I was shocked when a policeman handcuffed me. There must have been some “high” authority bent upon humiliating me, the second time they took me to Anandpur Sahib on April 21, they wanted to handcuff me, but somehow at the last minute, the idea was dropped.
Do the police deny having handcuffed you?
The police are professional liars. They have realized that arresting and handcuffing me was a big mistake. It was a violation of the Supreme Court guidelines which forbid a high court judge from having to appear in a court for any crime. But these chaps have crossed all limits, and that only means the end of the democratic set-up. Now they are facing an inquiry, but what will it get me? What’s happened has happened. What are your plans on the recently released Amnesty report? The Amnesty report is just the tip of the iceberg. It is a trailer of what is happening on a large scale in Punjab. Every day, 10 to 15 Sikh youths are eliminated by the police in fake encounters, which are extra-judicial murders.
Can you substantiate these charges?
There are at least 10 hardcore militants in the jail who have been granted bail, but they refuse to leave, They are afraid they will be picked up right outside the jail once they are free and then eliminated. The state is nothing but a bigger jail where executions can take place at the orders of an ordinary inspector.
Why do you thing the government takes no action against the policemen responsible for the atrocities?
Action? What action? The policemen are rewarded for these excesses. Those who were liquidators a few years ago are the district chiefs today. They have been given gallantry awards and Presidents medals, depending on the number of legalities they indulged in and the extra-judicial murders they committed.
You have been charged with sedition…
Nonsense, I have said nothing that amounts to sedition. The six Panthic organizations passed a resolution in Anandpur Sahib haling the poll boycott move, and I addressed that congregation, talking about the violation of human rights. Moreover, a poll boycott is an inherent right of every individual in a democracy. According to democratic norms, Beant Singh should not have stepped into office when the voter tum-Out was just21%. The boycott is a referendum against New Delhi.
What are your expectations from the present police set-up?
The British Raj was better than Our present set-up. The director general of police, K.P.S. Gill, humiliated a senior woman 1.A.S, officer and the governor refused to take any action against him on the grounds that it would lower the morale of the police force. If this is the treatment meted out to civil servants, you can well imagine the plight of the common man. Once I lodged a complaint against a DGP for having assaulted a woman. When Governor Nirmal Mukherjee took action, the home ministry intervened and the governor eventually resigned in disgust. This is the state of affairs; The police say you are partial in your reportage, That you do not condemn the killings of innocent persons at the hands of militants?
Wrong. That is an absolute lie, Any killing of innocents is bad. The latest example is the massacre of 11 Hindu engineers in Sangrur. The police are the biggest liars. They are uniformed criminals. What are your expectations from New Delhi vis-a-vis human rights?
None Even the racist South African regime wasn’t as atrocious as the Indian government. The way efforts were made to wipe out the Sikh community in 1984 is unprecedented in the history of the world, What action can the prime minister take against criminals when he himself was the home minister during the anti-Sikh riots? What are your experiences in jail?
This is a new chapter in my life. There are at least 40 Sikh youths who have been so brutally tortured that they cant even move, They have returned from the jaws of death. The jail is governed by the police. Its a police raj every where, The jail superintendent has told me that he will not allow anyone to be sent to the hospital for examination, Now, | am a heart patient, But in case of emergency, they will call a doctor which will take more than two hours. Do you think a heart patient can survive for two hours?
All this is a violation of the jail manual, But then these are the police diktats. Nearly 1,000 lawyers have struck work demanding your release. Its disrupting the entire judicial processes, is that justified?
The lawyers know that protesting against human rights violations is not a crime anywhere in the world except in India, Someone has to put a stop to the irregularities of the police, the lawyers are trying to do that. Its a question were all been asking for far too long, but what exactly is the crux of the Punjab problem?
The agony of the state is not that the two communities are pitted against each other, but that the common man is pitted against State terrorism. Individual terrorism cant be curtailed without bringing an end to State repression. You cannot cool boiling water without putting out the fire first.
Courtesy of Bulletin Toronto
The illustrated Weekly of India, in its edition of May 2-8,1992, Carried an interview from prison with Justice Ajit Singh Bains, arrested on April3 in Chandigarh under the Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. Reporter Harry Nanda gained access to Justice Bains by masquerading as a relative and conducted the interview.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 22, 1992
