Of the 173 armed clashes in Punjab reported in the Indian news media between men described as “terrorists” or “militants” and the police or security forces in the period January -31 December 1990 some 346 Sikhs were killed as opposed to 25 members of the police or security forces (See Chapter V).
Recent reports indicate the police continue to carry out extrajudicial executions under the guise of “encounter killings”. For example according to The Statesman New Delhi of 29 June 1990 two members of the All India Sikh Students Federation Harpal Singh aged 24 and Baljit Singh aged 20 were killed in what police said was an armed encounter in Kotla Ajner village. According to The Statesman “The Circumstantial evidence in the case collected by this correspondent after visiting the site and speaking to a number of villagers clearly shows that it was a case of fake police encounter. According to the villagers the victims were tortured by the police for a couple of hours and later killed” Attracting considerable publicity this incident was one of the few into which the state government ordered an investigation. The investigating magistrate reportedly concluded “the death of the two was not in the ordinary course of an encounter”. Suspected members of armed Sikh groups who “disappear” from custody are often said by the police to have “escaped” and relatives have been threatened by the police for trying to find out what happened to them.
Bikram Singh aged 33 was last seen in custody in May 1989 According to his father Jaswant Singh he was arrested on 2 May from his family home in Khudda village Hoshiarpur district by police officers from the Tanda and the Dasuya police stations The only reason given for his son’s arrest was that he was being taken away for investigation and would be returned soon. A week later Jaswant Singh saw his son in Dasuya police station. He later described his son’s condition in a letter to the Prime Minister of India.
“Bikram Singh wept and refused to tell anything. We felt that his death was gone to worst due to the ill-treatment of police officers. He was unable to walk even.”
Jaswant Singh visited his son on the following four days. On 14 May he was fold that his son was no longer in the police station. When he requested information about his son Jaswant Singh said he was threatened by the police. Later he was told by the police that his son had “escaped” from custody Bikram Singh’s
Independent institutions in India have sometimes exercised their powers to protect fundamental rights by investigating human rights abuses and taking effective Steps to halt or prevent them. Details are given in this report of several cases in which the courts have ordered an official search for individuals who had “disappeared”. Thanks to immediate judicial intervention the victims were found alive in un-acknowledged detention within days of the court order.
However in many other cases the court has simply declined to respond to habeas corpus petitions. In one case described in this report the High Court of Punjab dismissed a habeas corpus petition on technical grounds because it had been brought by a local human rights group unable to show a family relationship to the detainee and because the group had failed to specify an individual detaining the man. This is one of many instances known to Amnesty International in which legal remedies have failed to protect effectively the victims of grave human rights violations in Punjab it demonstrates the need to establish an effective local complaints machinery to which victims their legal representatives and relatives can have easy access.
Moreover the police have repeatedly frustrated attempts to bring those accused of human rights violations to justice. Investigations into the conduct of police officers accused of torturing detainees have been extremely rare and even when they have established responsibility prosecutions are not known to have occurred even several years after orders for criminal action were issued For example on 26 April 1988 the Supreme Court ordered officers of the Punjab Government to lay evidence against 21 police officers identified as having tortured detainees at Ladha Kothi jail in 1984 and 1985. But the Secretary to the Punjab Government charged with carrying out the order told the Supreme Court he was unable to go “incase with political overtones” As a consequence none of the 21 police officers have been brought to justice more than six years after the even.
At most officers allegedly responsible for human rights violations have been suspended or dismissed from service. In early 1990 the Director-General of the Punjab police told a visiting delegation of members of the European Parliament that in the first two months of 1990 seven police officers had been suspended and one dismissed for “crimes against the populous”(sic).
No further details were given about the action taken. In November the Indian news media reported that the Director General had opposed the registration of criminal cases against the police accused of illegally killing Harpal Singhand Baljit Singh at Kotla Ajner village. According to these reports Punjab’s Home Secretary Ajit Singh Chatha and the Governor’s Adviser P.S. Kohli had recommended that the guilty policemen be punished in this and other cases in which there were credible allegations of police involvement in excesses The Home Secretary was reported as saying such action was necessary if the credibility of the Punjab police was not to be eroded further However the Director-General of the police force Indeed to Amnesty International’s knowledge no police officers to date have been convicted for committing human rights violations in Punjab.
Violence by armed Sikh groups
(Most armed Sikh groups indulging in petty criminal activities and killings are the state sponsored Black Cats let loose to bring the Sikhs a bad name and for the police to justify its extrajudicial methods –Ed WSN.) According to official statistics issued in July 1990 armed groups operating in Punjab had killed 4000 people including 500 police officers since 11 May 1987 the date when the rule was imposed in the state According to these sources 1 860 armed Sikhs had been killed in that period although unofficial sources put the total number of Sikhs killed during that time by the security forces in real or alleged “encounters” with the police at several thousand.
The number of political killings of all kinds escalated in the summer of 1990 more than 200 civilians were reportedly killed by armed Sikh groups in July alone while 150 members of the latter were reportedly killed in the same month by the security forces or by rival armed Sikh groups. Some international media estimated that there were 600 political-motivated killings in Punjab during September 1990 alone. During 1990 at least 3800 people were officially reported killed by government forces and armed separatists as compared to 1800 during the previous year The sharp rise in politically-motivated killings is attributed to a number of factors the use of more sophisticated weapons by armed Sikh groups a rise in inter-group killings and in killings by criminal elements in the guise of armed separatists during attempts to extort money from villagers (acts also committed by police officers themselves) and a renewed police offensive. Amnesty International’s Position
Amnesty International condemns the torture or killing of prisoners by anyone including the various armed groups resorting to such practices in Punjab. Murders of people for expressing their views can never be justified whether the perpetrators are governments or those opposing them. Government has a specific obligation to uphold and protect human rights: arbitrary detention torture and extrajudicial killings of opponents are specifically prohibited by international law. In the case of armed non-governmental groups also there can never be a moral or legal justification for the arbitrary or indiscriminate killing of people Such acts are particularly reprehensible when committed against individuals solely for the peaceful expression of their conscientiously-held views or for doing so in a certain language or simply because they may be related to such persons.
Yet however provocative the abuses committed by armed groups can never justify the security forces themselves resorting to arbitrary detentions torture or extrajudicial executions of suspected opponents the violations of human rights which are the subject of this report. Such practices are not only specifically prohibited in Indian law and the Constitution itself but they also contravene basic principles of international law. International human rights standards have been made by and are addressed specifically to governments. Countries which have become a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are legally bound to respect and ensure the rights protected in it. Although the ICCPR permits derogations from certain rights in strictly defined circumstances it stipulates that even in times of emergency threatening the life of the nation all governments must as a minimum and in all circumstances protect the right to life and the freedom from torture India accepted a legal obligation to observe these standards when it signed and ratified the ICCPR in 1979 thereby clearly stating to the international community that it considered itself bound to uphold and protect these fundamental human rights. This report describes how the government has persistently failed to do that.
India’s human rights record was recently examined by the Human Rights Committee the treaty body consisting of 18 men and women elected by State Parties to the ICCPR to serve as independent experts supervising implementation of the ICCPR at its forty-first session meeting in New York on 26 and 27 March 1991. Many members of the Committee expressed concern that a number of the rights guaranteed in the ICCPR notably the right to life the freedom from torture (both non-dirigible rights) as well as the right not to be arbitrarily detained and the right to a fair trial appeared not to be effectively protected and had been violated in practice. Committee members were particularly concerned that provisions of special laws in force in India (and described in Chapter VI of this report) namely the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act 1987 the National Security Act and the Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act not only short-circuited guarantees provided in the Indian Constitution and laws but were also incompatible with several rights provided in the ICCPR which India is bound to uphold.
One member of the Committee concluded after the Attorney-General of India, Shri G.Ramaswamy, presented remarks to the Committee on behalf of the Indian Government that he still remained concerned about the implementation of the Covenant in the so-called disturbed areas, the extraordinarily great number of arbitrary killings widespread arbitrary arrest in some states the excessive powers given to the security forces including authority to shoot to kill suspected law breakers and the failure to bring to trial a number of police officials alleged to be offenders.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 7, 1991
