Lakhwinder Singh According to his brother Tarsem Singh Lakhwinder Singh was arrested by officers from Dara Baba Nanak police station on Sept 4 1990. The police refused to acknowledge his arrest but demanded between 15000 and 20000 Rupees for his release. Tarsem Singh brought a habeas corpus petition in the High Court of Punjab which on 10 September 1990 ordered a warrant officer to search for his brother in its order of Sept. 121990 the High Court described what happened when the warrant officer went to search for Lakhwinder Singh in the police Station where relatives suspected he was being held:
“Accordingly Shri R.L Bhatia warrant officer went to that police station along with the petitioner (Tarsem Singh the brother) at about 12 noon on 11/9/90. The outer gate of the police station was found open. On the direction of the warrant officer Tarsem Singh shouted for his brother Lakhwinger Singh but al first there was no response. Later-on after a few minutes the alleged detenu responded to the call from the veranda near the open gate. The Head Constable was then present inside the police station. He apprised the warrant officer that Lakhwinder Singh was wanted in a murder case but there was no entry in the daily diary of the police Station regarding the arrest of Lakhwinder Singh.”
The Sub-Inspector of the police station then arrived and explained Lakhwinder Singh’s presence in police custody to the warrant officer. He gave a different explanation in his statement to the High Court the following day. The High Court found that.
“The contradictory stand taken by the Sub-Inspector in his statement before the warrant officer and in the return filed by him clearly spells out that Lakhwinder Singh was being detained at the police station without showing his arrest in the above referred murder case. Before the warrant officer this Sub-Inspector had represented that he failed to arrest Lakhwinder Singh but he might have entered the police station along with the petitioner from the open gate but in the return (the Sub-Inspector’s statement to the court) it is averred that Lakhwinder Singh had voluntarily surrendered at 10. a.m on 11/ 9/90 at the police station just before the arrival of the warrant officer and his formal arrest was yet to be made”
The High Court found that Lakhwinder Singh had been illegally detained at the police station. It ordered that he be released and that the Sub Inspector pay 5000 Rupees in compensation by Oct.1, 1990 (a sum still outstanding by mid-December).
This report includes several other cases in which the courts have been able to intervene effectively to locate people who were held in unacknowledged police custody (See Chapter IV). This happened twice to Baldev Singh. Because of the extraordinary circumstances of this case it is described in detail.
Baldev Singh son of Jagir Singh
Baldev Singh a 25-yr-old salesman in the Cooperative Department of the Punjab Government and a resident of Shahpur village in Amritsar district was arrested on April 18, 1989. He was taken to the Mehta Chowk police station Amritsar according to a habeas corpus petition brought on June 41989 in the Punjab and Haryana High Court by Baldev Singh’s brother Malkiat Singh. His detention was not officially acknowledged no reason was given for his arrest no charges were made against him and he was not brought before a magistrate. Instead of being detained at a police station of in jail he was held at a private house which his brother Malkiat Singh claimed was being used by the police as an interrogation center The Station House Officer (SHO) at Mehta Chowk police station filed an affidavit on June 5 denying that Baldev Singh was being illegally detained at his police station.
In response to the habeas corpus petition the Punjab and Haryana High Court appointed a warrant officer to find Baldev Singh and bring him before the court. On June 6.1989 the warrant officer and Malkiat Singh went to the house in which Baldev Singh was allegedly being held. The door was locked and the police at the nearby Mehta Chowk police station when approached claimed that they were unable to help the warrant officer gain entry. However when the warrant officer broke into the house Baldev Singh was found in a locked room According to his brother he was naked and “was unable to move about on account of torturing”.
The SHO at Mehta Chowk police station claimed he knew nothing of Baldev Singh’s detention He denied that he had been arrested and brought to the police station pointing out that his name was not registered in the daily diary entries dating from May 181989. However earlier records starting from April 181989 (the date Baldev Singh was arrested according to his relatives) were not made available for scrutiny The Mehta Chowk police officers also stated that no criminal case had been registered against Baldev Singh and therefore his presence was not required at the police station. They also said they did not know who owned or occupied the house in which Baldev Singh had been detained. The warrant officer therefore handed Baldev Singh over to the custody of his brother Malkiat Singh as the High Court had directed.
Malkiat Singh later reported in a sworn statement that he took his brother to Chandigarh accompanied by two friends Surjit Singh and Mangal Singh and their brother-in-law Kuldip Singh. They went to see Baldev Singh’s lawyer who advised him to go to a relative’s house until June 6 when he hoped to obtain a court order for Baldev Singh’s admission to hospital.
Surjit Singh Mangal Singh and Kuldip Singh returnned to their village but were stopped on the way by police officers led by the SHO from Mehta Chowk police station. All three were taken into custody and forced to disclose where Baldev Singh was staying. Baldev Singh was rearrested the following day June 7 by the SHO at Mehta Chowk police station along with other police officials all in plain clothes travelling in the van which Malkiat Singh had used to collect Baldev Singh the previous day. They went to the house where Baldev Singh and his brother Malkiat were staying and took them away. When they had driven past Kharar Malkiat Singh was ordered to getoutof the van and the police then drove off with Baldev Singh. Maikiat Singh swore an affidavit dated June 81989 in which he said that he had been threatened:
“The Police officials told him (Malkiat Singh) that they will deal with him subsequently for filing habeas corpus petition and will teach the applicant a lesson by just keeping and torturing him in the manner Baldev Singh is being kept and treated.”
On August 9 1989 Baldev Singh’s father Jagir Singh brought another habeas corpus petition in which he requested that the SHO of the Mehta Chowk Police station and the Central Reserve Police unit stationed at Ramdas Amritsar district produce Baldev Singh. In this petition Jagir Singh alleged that after the police had abducted his son on June 7 they had handed him over to the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) stationed at P.W.D. Rest House Ramdas Tehsil Ajnala Amritsar District claiming that he was an extremist called Tota Ram from Mahalia Nanaksar of Taran.
The court upheld this habeas corpus petition and again ordered a warrant officer to locate Baldev Singh. The following day August 10 the warrant officer accompanied by Baldev Singh’s father and brother went to the rest house where the CRPF were stationed. Although the CRPF denied any knowledge of Baldev Singh the warrant officer found Baldev Singh in a room inside the rest house According to the warrant officer’s report of August 11.
“The petitioner (Jagit Singh) took me near one room and called the alleged detenu by name in loud voice. Someone gave response from inside the room and we went inside and saw that the alleged detenu who was identified by his father and also told me his name was Baldev Singh was laying on a loose cot wearing only underwear. He was too weak to Walk and is a skeleton.
Despite this the CRPF denied that Baldev Singh was in their custody and told the warrant officer to inquire at the nearby Ramdas police station. At the police station the officer in charge also’ denied Baldev Singh was in custody adding he was not required at the police station in connection with any charge. Returning to the rest house the warrant officer tried to serve CRPF personnel with the courts notice to bring Baldev Singh to the court the notice saying that Baldev Singh was not their responsibility. When the SHO of the Mehta Chowk police station eventually arrived he accepted the warrant officer’s notice to present Baldev Singh in court the next day. He did not do so however but brought an affidavit dated August 111989 to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh in which he denied that he had ever been responsible for arresting and detaining Baldev Singh.
Finally on August 25 the police brought Baldev Singh to court and handed him over to his relatives. The High Court ordered that he should be admitted to the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research at Chandigarh for treatment. According to a report in the Indian Express of Sept 5.1989:
Doctors attending on him have listed a number of injuries and deformities. It may take months before he can walk straight…Newsmen visited Baldev Singh in the special male surgical ward of the PGI on Sunday. Baldev Singh told them that he was made to confess that he was a terrorist and involved in killings. He said the actual issue for which he was tortured was the appointment of another salesman in a cooperative society. The party which wanted its man to be posted used the police’.
A report in India Today on Sept.301989 cited unofficial sources as maintaining that Baldev Singh’s detention was a case of “mistaken identity”. In the end no case was registered against him. To Amnesty International’s knowledge no action has been taken against those responsible for Baldev Singh’s illegal detention and torture.
The practice of keeping detainees in unacknowledged detention is not restricted to the state of Punjab: it happens in many other Indian states. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu on Jan.22, 1991 the Madras High Court” expressed concern and anguish at the series of cases being brought to its notice through habeas corpus petitions complaining about the police resorting to ‘legal’ detentions The bench said quite often the arrest was not shown in the records Only when writ petitions (habeas corpus petitions) were filed the date of arrest was recorded and the detenu was then sent to a Magistrate for being remanded. This sort of practice was bad in law” (The Hindu Madras Jan.23,1991).
Amnesty International believes that incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or relatives has been an important factor in facilitating torture and in some cases “disappearance”. International human rights standards require that states guarantee prompt and regular access to a lawyer and the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers adopted by consensus al the Eighth UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in September 1990 stipulate that access to lawyers should not be later than 48 hours from the time of arrest (Article 7)
Harassment of relatives of people wanted by the police
Amnesty International has received numerous reports that family members including brothers fathers mothers and sisters have been detained and often tortured if the person the police wanted to arrest could not be found if the police wanted to extract information about that person’s activities or whereabouts or in retaliation for bringing legal act on behalf of missing family members. There is some official confirmation of this practice.
On Sept.181990 the Director-General of Police Punjab issued new guidelines to the police and para-military forces which appeared to acknowledge that innocent people had been arrested The Director-General according to a report in the Indian Express of Sept.20, 1990 said that women and children should not be ‘ought to police stations unless there were special reason and that any unexplained presence of persons in the police station would be looked into”. He also added that whenever suspects were brought to police stations or other places for questioning it would be “advisable” to inform the relatives and respectable persons of the locality about the arrest. The following are some examples of arbitrary arrests of family members.
In a July 1990 affidavit Piara Singh a 68-yr-old man from Rattan village Ludhiana district described how his family was harassed by police who were searching for his son Gursharan Singh a member of the All India Sikh Student Federation. Piara Singh claims he was arrested more than 50 times. During his one week detention by the Station House Officer (SHO) at Sudhar police station he said that his legs were pulled apart to 180 degrees that a heavy steel roller was rolled on his thighs and that he was hung upside down from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. He claims he was tortured in a similar way on a number of other occasions because he was unable to give information about his son’s where about.
Bhajan Singh from Maksudra village Luchiana and two of his five sons Balwant and Bhagwant Singh aged 24 and 22 signed affidavits on May 201990 describing the repeated and ongoing harassment of family members by the police who were seeking to apprehend alleged militants including an elder son in the family. Bhagwant Singh in his affidavit alleged:
“That during the period I was in jail SHO (name withheld) kept on harassing my parents and the family members even when he had been transferred…That after the last rites of my killed brother Jasvir Singh (who had been killed by the police in an encounter his family believed to have been staged by the police as a cover-up) were over (name withheld) SHO picked up my father Bhajan Singh and mother Gurcharan Kaur my mother was Set free after two days but my father was subjected to humiliation during 15 days illegal detention. He was pressurized to produce my elder brother who…had stopped visiting us”
Hardev Singh a 55-yr-old mason living in Ghawaddi village Ludhiana stated in an affidavit that he was detained several times by the police in an attempt to get him to produce his son. He said he was detained for one night at Sadr police station Ludhiana at the end of May 1987 and released on condition he hand over his 20-yr-old son Gurmeet Singh to the police as soon as possible.
Hardev Singh took his son to the Sadr police Station on June 11987 and was assured by the police that he would be released the next day. However on June 2 the police denied that Gurmeet Singh was in their custody. Hardev Singh petitioned the Ludhiana magistrate’s court to have his Son brought before the court expressing fears that he could be killed in a staged encounter. The case was heard on June 81987 and according to his affidavit Hardev Singh was tortured because of his efforts to find his son: “the Naib Court (police constable attached to the Court) [name withheld told me in clear terms that Since I had fled a case against the police so I would be taught a proper lesson Meanwhile I came to learn that Gurmeet Singh was in illegal detention in Dehlon police Station where I contacted SHO name withheld] who started torturing me physically and I was made to write that I would not pursue the case of disappearance of my son.”
Gurmeet Singh’s “disappearance” was later resolved when he was brought before a magistrate’s Court and was later released on bail.
An article in the Indian Express April 4, 1989 described a case of the torture and extra judicial execution of two brothers by police who were trying to extract information about another brother.
In Bolewal village a young man named Kulwant Singh had absconded and was suspected probably rightly of having become a terrorist. The police arrested his elder brother Nirwar Singh tortured him and subsequently declared that he died in a police encounter. Later they arrested the youngest brother Dilbagh Singh and tortured him for extracting Information about his absconding brother.
On May 21988 the police visited the house again about 2a.m and as Denbigh Singh was trying to run away he was shot dead.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 21, 1991
