The state terrorism perpetuated by the regime in Delhi is meant to create such an a we and terrorize the populace to such an extent that it would accept the slavery of the central government for ever so that no one would ever dare to raise their voice against slavery. By crushing the Punjabis they also want to tell the other enslaved but increasingly aware nationalities in the country that to even dream, let along think of struggling against the plunder and coercion of the center is futile. It is because of this that they do not see what
a court may have to say about a youth. They have simply ordered, “Kill by whatever means, every young rebel.” They have no constraints on the means to kill. If they cannot kill the youth (through state machinery) then let hit men do it.
Absconding youth are arrested and tortured by 18 century methods. Even after this torture, if a youth does not agree to do as the police ask him, he is both tortured till he dies or is taken somewhere and shot dead and a fictitious story of a police encounter is
released. Police versions of these “encounters” are often similar.
The bodies of the youth killed in so called police encounters are not released to their parents because their bodies would reveal the torture marks before the “encounter”. A fabricated post mortem report is procured from the doctors in hospitals, the dead bodies are declared unclaimed and cremated.
The parents of the wanted youths are especially singled out for torture. Whenever there is an incident in the area, hell is let loose on the families of all the wanted youths. It is not seen whether they are to blame or not, whether they have any contact with them or not.
They, including elderly fathers and mothers, young sisters and brothers, wives and children are rounded up and put in police stations, where they are humiliated in various ways. The younger members are tortured in front of the older members and visa versa.
Sisters are made to beat up their brothers and brothers their sisters. Young women are
Stripped naked and beaten, their private parts are hit, they are raped, pregnant women often miscarry.
Torture is carried out without any consideration of the persons age, or health and neither is there any care if they will live or die. When someone dies during torture, the dead body is thrown out of the police station and riddled with bullets, after which the press is told of the killing of another dangerous “terrorist”. There are so many cases of those elderly people who spent months in the hospital after police beatings, many returned home and gave up their lives. Such people not only include the elderly but even include young men and women.
Police has left only two choices for the brothers of absconding youths, either they should repeatedly get their bones broken at the police stations, tolerate the humiliation of their parents in front of their eyes, rot in the jail cells, or join their brothers. There are more than a dozen families in Punjab in which one after the other brothers have had to abscond as a result of which four or five members of these families fell to the bullets of the police.
Many families are implicated in cases of giving shelter to the absconding youth after they have been humiliated and tortured in the police stations and are left to rot in jails.
Even though it is clear that after the warrants have been issued, no one takes shelter in his own home since he is apprehensive of being arrested by the police. This apprehension is the greatest in his own village since everyone knows him and someone could turn
Informant for the reward money. But how does all this matter to the regime? It wants to take the revenge for the young men against their families. By committing atrocities against
the families, it wants to dishearten the youth, by singling out a prominent family and brutalizing it, it wants to terrorize the area and put it in disarray.
If some members of the panchayat (village councils) or important persons go the police
stations, they are roundly abused. ;
The houses of many absconding youth are being demolished. The belongings are either looted or wrecked. Even crops are not spared and electric pump sets, necessary for irrigation, are removed to prevent new crops from being sown in.
Some families of the absconders have either taken the remnants of their belongings and
have gone away, some are in hiding. They look like refugees and their homes have been
ransacked and destroyed in the same way as a winning nation despoils the looser after a war.
Let alone the immediate families of the absconders, even distant relatives do not escape
Police atrocities. Even their animals do not escape the wrath of the police. After taking the
entire family to the police station, police tell the entire village that anyone who dares to
feed the animals will be dealt with. The animals tied in their stables die after a few days of
hunger.
At times it is not the family of the absconders but the entire village which faces the
wrath of the police.
Interrogation centers have been established in every district which are manned by
vicious torturers. The common kind of torture carried out at these centers are:
(A) Rolling a heavy wooden roller on the thighs
(B) Hanging the person upside down from the roof till he faints.
(C) Giving the person electric shocks in his private parts.
(D) Putting a wooden stick smeared with ground chilies in the anus.
(E) Tying human excreta to the face.
(F) Stretching the legs apart till the pelvic muscles are ripped.
(G) Ripping the nails off hands and feet.
(H) Cutting gashes in the hands and legs and putting salt in them.
(I) Burning the flesh with heated iron rods or an electric iron.
A youth arrested on the faintest suspicion is put in these centers and tortured for months, without being produced before any court.
Before being subjected to torture they are forced to witness the horrifying sight of
others being tortured.
In Amritsar’s Mal Mandi interrogation center there were even cases of people being made to watch a victim thrashing in agony after his hands were cut (Akali Patrika 23 Feb 1986). Those who refused to speak the language of the police despite watching this are then tortured for weeks at a stretch. Many lose their sanity after watching torture or being subjected to it. Numerous young men of the border districts have been admitted in the mental institute in Amritsar.
Many young men become sterile after being given repeated shocks to their private
parts, while the bodies of others are battered so badly that they cannot even earn a living.
Those who die due to torture at these interrogation centers are shown to have been killed
in police “encounters”. Because they have neither been formally arrested nor have they
been produced in any court, it is easy for the police to say that they have been killed in an
“Encounter”. If a formal arrest has been registered, it is still not difficult to cover the torture death of the suspect. It is then said that he committed suicide in police custody, or was bitten by a snake or escaped police custody, or his accomplices whisked him away from police custody.
It is often reported that an accused, after being surrounded by the police, committed suicide by swallowing cyanide. In fact the young men know that the police will undoubtedly kill them once they are in their hands after torturing them brutally at the interrogation centers and therefore take this step.
Newspapers often report that such and such person escaped police custody. This is often used as a tool of repression and a death warrant. By this fake news the youth is put on notice that henceforth he is at the mercy of the police. He is told that he should either turn into a police tout and will thus in fact be released, but if he doesn’t he will be killed.
Similarly news is released that some men have been killed in police encounters
Whereas they are actually in police custody. They are also pressed into corroborating with
the police. There are many in the torture centers who have been reported to have either escaped police custody or have been killed in encounters with the police. They are in fact leading a life worse than death. Some have lost their mental balance while others are involved in getting young men arrested. Satnam Singh Bawa was one such person who
was arrested in Delhi with Harjinder Singh Jinda and tortured at different torture centers.
He was dressed in a police inspector’s uniform and made to identify the militant leaders.
After some time he actually managed to escape though soon after he was captured by the
police and killed. But before being recaptured he had held a press conference and had spoken to newsmen at length about such police operations.
CRPF and BSF camps have been established in schools and community training
centers so that the impressionable young minds are indoctrinated by them. So much so that they have even been kept in girls school where they behave indecently and pass lewd comments. If anyone complains about theirs lewd and indecent behavior, they are arrested
and tortured on grounds of “obstructing the fight against terrorism and helping terrorists.”
Thus the people are left helpless.
CRPF pickets have been established in colleges and universities. Some plain clothes
police men have been admitted as students to report on the activities of those who raise
their voice against state repression and help in their abduction by the CRPF. In some
universities the
“Black Cats” are let lose directly who roam around, displaying their weapons openly, in cars without number plates and terrorize the students, and abduct student leaders when they can. They are taken to the interrogation centers and tortured so as to stifle their voice against repression and send a message to the student community. As a result of these activities the centers of higher learning have a pall of fear hanging over them. Students apprehend being named in the report by one of the plain clothes policemen.
Now the government has started a new scheme in which the big touts will be given one year’s training after which they will either be inducted in the police or in other
departments where they will report on their coworkers. In this way a fear of the regime is
created in the government departments. Today various parts of Punjab have check posts,
today they are here tomorrow they are there. Buses, cars, scooters, etc are stopped and
searched at these check posts where rough handling by the police is common. Drivers
have to constantly be on the look out for these check posts and their signal to stop because
if they fail to do bullets will fly. If a driver doesn’t stop exactly at the designated spot, a
barrage of abuses is hurled at him
Entire villages are also searched. Police first surrounds the entire village and then after
using the speaker in the Gurdwara, they summon the entire populace to a central spot.
When the people have gathered, the police starts the search which leaves many families
without their valuable belongings. People in these areas do not have the security of
keeping their jewelry and cash.
Police behaves abdominally with the people whom they have gathered in one place and
at times they are collectively beaten. Many police officers operate on the principle that if
the important people are humiliated publicly, the entire village would be terrorized. The
group beatings by the police are called, “Parshad Dena” (or the handing out of sacred
offerings.)
Police posts, manned by Special Police Officers (SPO) have been established in border
districts. These SPO’s are further brutalizing the people who have already suffered at the
hands of the BSF and the CRPF. They have been seen drunk, making lewd gestures and
Misbehaving with the ladies of the village at night. If anyone tries to stop them, he is beaten and thrown into a police station. The SPOs were involved in the abduction, rape
and murder of two minor village girls in Gurdaspur district.
Police and CRPF have been given the freedom to abduct any young man anywhere.
They do not need even to inform the concerned police station about it.
While arresting the young men, they do not tell the parents or the village council
members about where they are going to take them. Parents go from one police station to
another to try and find out the whereabouts of their child. They are abused and pushed
around. They never know when they will hear that their son has been “killed in a police
encounter”. They scan newspapers and hear news bulletins for news about their child. In
this state even if they were to hear that their child was being brutally tortured at an
interrogation center, their happiness would know no bounds. For some time they feel that
their child has been re-born after which they start worrying about raising enough money
to give to police officers to buy their sons release. Those fortunate enough to do so manage
to get them released while others unable to do so rot in jail.
Whenever there is a killing the police arrests as many people as possible in this connection who are interrogated and tortured in an inhuman manner. Some people in order to escape the torture accept the version created by the police as it is, and are thus falsely implicated. Those who are released after the beatings also have to pay between Rs 10,000-50,000 as bribe. Those who cannot afford it take loans to get their relatives released. Thus the police have made it a business to arrest innocent people and extort money from them. They extort millions this way.
There are over 15,000 young men who could not raise the money to buy their freedom and are therefore languishing in prisons. A perusal of the cases they have been implicated
in is very interesting. The cases are all similar and it appears that the police has a few forms
which it fills with the name of those it wants to implicate.
Whenever a newspaper or a magazine reveals police atrocities, a case is registered
against its editor or publisher. The fear of having a case registered against the newspapers
has resulted in an undeclared censorship.
Human night organizations like the PHRO are not allowed to express their concern in a
peaceful manner as can be seen by the examples of the ban on the march on August 15
and the peaceful protest on September 30. The passport of Justice Ajit Singh Bains, the
chairman of PHRO has been impounded so as to prevent him from informing people abroad about the human rights violations in the Punjab. The organization and its chairman have been targeted for vicious media propaganda against them. Government
officials as well as journalists who have been bought over are involved in this. Ribeiro himself spouted forth poison against Justice Bains in the “Illustrated Weekly.”
