While it would be futile to try to find a rationale behind the militarisation of the State by pumping in all kinds of military and para-military outfits, it may be of interest to analyze why these security forces behave in such inhuman and sadistic manner and raid village after village at will. The main reason for CRPFs sudden attacks on villagers is the extreme kind of demoralization prevailing among them. Every day there are some CRPF casualties or at least attacks on them by militants. Their convoys are attacked and, in fact, it has been gathered that in certain areas of Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts the militants can attack them at will and without any serious losses. It is the kind of demoralization which becomes the basis of CRPF atrocities on defenseless villagers. Incidentally, although CRPF and BSF personnel and their vehicles are attacked quite frequently, such incidents are hardly reported in the Press.

 A foreign Army in occupation?

And then this inimical attitude of CRPF could also be explained by the fact that almost all CRPF personnel are non-Sikhs and non-Punjabis. There is a big hiatus between their culture and religion and the Sikh culture and religion. To make things worse, the government propaganda machinery creates an impression in their mind about Punjab as an enemy area, No wonder they behave most rudely and act most unscrupulously and perhaps it is because of this kind of behavior of CRPF that the general public in Punjab visualizes them as an invading army, something which symbolizes evil. To say the least, they are most unwelcomed in Punjab.

It is because of the CRPFs brazen disregarding for the civilians that they latter refuse to help them when they are attacked by the militants the villagers prefer to be neutral. This causes much frustration among the security personnel. They find it difficult to reconcile them to the fact that they have not been able to terrorist the people and that the people still dare show indifference towards them, so they resort to more violence, more filthy language  more barbarity. During the raid on the five villages, the CRPF personnel repeatedly remarked that the people of these villages deserved all this since they did not offer water to the injured security personnel after their vehicle had been blown off in the blast while passing through Talwandi Khuman. So it was teaching them a lesson operation.

A similar spectacle of CRPF brutality was witnessed in the same area last year also two jeeps of the CRPF battalion had been destroyed and about 15 security personnel killed in a bomb blast on the bridge between Jajeyani and Marrari villages on September 10, 1989. The CRPF gave vent to its fury by raiding Sham Nagar, Marrai Kalan, Jaintipura, Gujjarpura, Bhangali Kalan and Tarpai. Over two hundred youth between 16nd 40 were picked up by the CRPF personnel and tortured brutally for two days. While most of the youth were set free after two days, seven young men of Gujar pura village were kept in illegal custody for another six days and were subjected to more severe physical torture. Out of them two namely Satnam Singh son of Puran Singh and Baldev Singh alias Babbi son of Khazan Singh were still kept in the torture chambers where Baldev Singh, a student of 10+2 class of Guru Nanak College, Batala died as a result of CRPF torture. Later he was reported having been killed in an encounter with the security forces near and Sanawali villages on September 14, 1989.

The Akhand Path is disrupted

The security forces did not bother even to get his dead body identified by any member of his family. The family came to know of the killing only through the Press. His clothes and other belongings were also not handed to the family and their requests in this completely ignored. Even after killing Blade CRIP continued harassing and torturing house was raided many times and throughly and the members of the family were subjected inhuman treatment. Between October 22 the family was holding Akhand Path (around the 48 hours recitation of Guru Granth Sahib) a strong contingent of the CRPF and police conduct raids and disrupted the Akhand Path.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 11, 1991