Violation of fundamental human rights committed by the institutions of the State in Punjab for the last many years is a documented part of our study about the situation in that State. A report on State Terrorism in Punjab, released by the Committee in February 1989, highlights instances of illegal detention, torture of detainees in custody and their extrajudicial execution, which had become as pervasive as unequivocally they were sanctioned by the political establishment at the Centre, Repression of the Sikhs in Punjab was, under the previous regime, first and foremost a political resolution legitimized by democratic institutions like the press, Judiciary and Parliament and was carried out by its executive limbs. It was but natural that the victims of this resolution were as totally alienated from the regime, as it ‘was pursued without respite, as much in specific instances of State atrocity as in a general political sense. There is no dearth of examples like the three following, to vindicate this assertion.
EXAMPLE 1
Mrs. Gurdev Kaur and Mrs. Gurmit Kaur were employees of Prabhat Finances and Investment Limited, Amritsar. On 21st August, 1989 when they were working in their office across Khalsa College, Amritsar, a police team from Batala raided the office and forced them to get into a Maruti van which had no number plates. Except for Head Constable Lakhvinder Singh all other officials were in plain clothes. They were first driven to Sadar police station in Batala and then shifted to Beeko Interrogation Centre in Batala where, around 7 pm, Senior Superintendent of Police, Govind Ram, personally supervised their torture in the course of their interrogation. Mrs. Gurdev Kaur was let off in the early afternoon of 22 August. But Mrs. Gurmit Kaur was held in illegal custody till the 26th. It was on that day that her arrest was formally registered and a remand for her interrogation for two days was obtained by the police from a court in Gurdaspur. The police remand was extended up to 3 September. On 3 September Gurmit Kaur was discharged and released from the custody by the designated Court, Gurdaspur.
The story of their illegal detention and torture appeared in the daily Ajit, a Punjabi newspaper on 27 August 1989. On 29 August, Mr. Hari Singh Nagra, an advocate from Chandigarh, filed a petition in the High Court of Punjab and Haryana on the basis of the newspaper reports of the case seeking medical examination of the tortured, and compensation and legal proceedings against those responsible. The State of Punjab in its answer denied the allegations of illegal detention and torture while admitting that Gurdev Kaur was taken to Beeko Interrogation Centre on 21 and 22 August 1989 and that she was allowed to return to her house after some hours of questioning. In their answer the respondents alleged that Gurdev Kaur had confessed to her involvement in terroristic activities. On 11 September 1989, both Gummit Kaur and Gurdev Kaur filed applications before the High Court asking that they be medically examined for ascertainment of their torture. The petition No 2861 of 1989 was however, dismissed by Justice SS. Diwan on the following grounds of untenability:
i) The two women in filling their applications claimed to have been tortured by the Senior Superintendent of Batala police personally whereas the petition filed by Hari Singh Nagra only alleged that they have been tortured at his instance. (The petition was filed by a public spirited lawyer who had read about their illegal custody and torture in a newspaper. Minor contradictions between his petition and the applications filed by the victims could not, therefore, be seen to vitiate the case
ii) “The two women did not complain to the Magistrate before whom they appeared on 26 August that they had been tortured. Gurmit Kaur asked the Magistrate for a medical examination only on 30 August and upon being taken to the Civil Hospital gave in writing to the police that she did not want to be examined. (According to the police Gurdey Kaur was never arrested and produced before a Magistrate. Gurmit Kaur did apply for medical examination on 30 August. The statement she gave to the police when taken to the Civil Hospital that she did not want to be examined was made under duress. Since she remained in police custody for five more days, her subsequent request to the High Court for a medical examination had, independently of all these facts, a sound basis.)
iii) While applying to the High Court for medical examination at a belated stage they did not support the allegation of torture in custody with a medical certificate. (The request was belated because they had been bedridden following their release from the police custody. On learning that a petition on their behalf had been filed by a public spirited lawyer they decided to file their own affidavits, the fact that no hospital would give them a medical certificate establishing their torture in custody was precisely the reason that had prompted them to seek intervention from the High Court.)
EXAMPLE II
The two families of Joginder Singh, a Sikh priest, and of Makhan Singh, a small grocer, living in Bham village in Batala sub division of Gurdaspur had before 11 June 1989 little in common except that both had teen aged daughters who were friends. Joginder Singh’s fourteen years old Salwinder Kaur was attending the local school whereas Sarabjit Kaur, Makhan Singh’s daughter, also fourteen, had given up the school after completing her fifth standard.
11 June 1989 was a Sunday. Joginder Singh had left early that morning for a neighboring village to perform a religious ceremony. Makhan Singh too went away to Hargovindpur, a nearby town, to make purchases to stock his shop. Around 9 am Darshan Kaur, Salwinder’s mother asked her daughter to go and fetch some soft clay from the canal bank, one and half kilometers from their house, to redub the mud flooring of the house, a regular chore. Salwinder Kaur picked up her friend Sarabjit and with her on the pillion of her bicycle peddled down to the canal bank. They returned after twenty minutes with a pack of clay and went back to fetch some more. Pratap Singh, younger brother of Joginder Singh, was by then in his fields mowing grass for fodder. He noticed the girls cycling down towards the canal for the second time. He also saw a police jeep parked by the side of the mud road leading to the canal and some constables, among them Purushottam of a nearby police post, standing on the road, talking to Palwinder Singh, alias Pilla, who had the reputation of being a drunkard and a loafer.
Pratap Singh then saw Purushottam and Palwinder Singh leap on to the bicycle when it approached them and pulled Sarabjit down from the pillion. A visibly frightened Salwinder tried to peddle on but crashed against a tree and fell down. Pratap Singh saw the policemen grab both Salwinder Kaur and Sarabjit Kaur; pushing them into the jeep and then driving away with them. Pratap Singh raised an alarm. But there was no one in the vicinity since most of the villagers had gathered around television sets in the village to watch the Sunday morning relay of Ramayana, a popular mythological serial. Pratap Singh then rushed to Joginder Singh’s house and told Darshan Kaur, his sister in law, what he had seen. Both Joginder Singh and Makhan Singh had returned home. They, together with Pratap Singh and Rajinder Singh, a sympathizer of the village, went out to the place from where the girls had been kidnapped. They recovered from the location the two pairs of slippers that the girls had been wearing, and their bicycle. They went on to search for the girls and spent the whole day at it. The next morning they went to the police station in Hargovindpur, accompanied by several others from the village, including Kundan Singh, the head of the village council of elders to lodge the First Information Report regarding the abduction. Assistant’ Sub-Inspector Harjinder Singh who met them refused to register their complaint but promised to search for the girls. Rajinder Singh who had also gone to the police station told the officer that both Purushottam and Palwinder Singh were friends and on several occasions in the past had been seen together misbehaving with young women of the village. But the Assistant Sub Inspector refused to take down their complaint formally.
Joginder Singh and Makhan Singh visited the police station several times in the next days to find out about their daughters, with the officers repeating that the search for them was on. During the night of 16 June, policemen from Hargovindpur came to the houses of Joginder Singh and Makhan Singh and asked them to accompany them to the police station to identify their daughters whose dead bodies they claimed to have recovered floating in the canal. Both of them accompanied by several men from the village went to the police station in Hargovindpur. Two naked distended bodies were lying in a police van parked outside the station. Policemen forced them to get into the bus and drove them to the Civil Hospital in Batala town. At the hospital Harjinder Singh Bahal, Assistant Sub-Inspector, who was leading the policemen, asked Joginder Singh and Makhan Singh to tell the hospital authorities that the bodies were unidentified and unclaimed and had been recovered by the police in their presence from the canal near Hargovindpur, Both of them refused to disclaim the identity of their daughters. Harjinder threatened that they would be eliminated in a faked encounter if they disobeyed. Joginder Singh managed to slip away and went to the residence of the Sub Divisional Magistrate. The Assistant Sub-Inspector took Makhan Singh back to Hargoyindpur police station. Purushottam, the constable accused of abducting the girls was there together with another Sub Inspector Ram Lubhaya Bagga. The three of them manhandled Makhan Singh. His manhandling went on till 17th morning. In the meanwhile Joginder Singh had managed to talk to the Sub Divisional Magistrate of Batala who ordered that after the post mortem the dead bodies be handed over to their parents for cremation. Report of the post mortem performed early on the morning of 18 June 89, marked AN PMQ 66/89, recorded that the cause of their death could be ascertained after chemical examination of swab taken from their vagina.
In a report on the incident that appeared in the Tribune of 8 July 1989, the Senior Superintendent of police, Batala, was quoted to have laughingly remarked that the interrogation of Purushottam had revealed that he had been having an affair with one of the girls. On 9 July 89 the police station Batala registered a criminal case No, 85/1 under sections 363 kidnapping, 376 -rape, 302 murders, of the Indian penal code against Constable Purushottam Singh. Purushottam was arrested and committed to judicial custody. Purushottam was released on bail when the prosecution failed to file a charge sheet against him within the stipulated period of three months. On 12 December 1989 Makhan Singh and Joginder Singh moved the court of Judicial Magistrate, Ist class, Batala with the request that the court may direct the authorities to produce reports of chemical examinations ordered by the civil hospital, Batala. The magistrate ordered that the copies of the reports be given to the parents. But they have not yet received them. Purushottam is free on bail and it is rumored that he has been elevated to the posting at Sadar police station in Batala.
EXAMPLE III
Baldev Singh, son of Jagir Singh, resident of village Shahpur under police station, Beas, District Amritsar, was picked up by a team of policemen led by Inspector Mohinder Singh, Station House Officer of Mehta Chowk police station in Amritsar, on 18 April 1989. Malkiat Singh brother of Baldev Singh found out in early June 89 that Inspector Mohinder Singh was detaining his brother for interrogation in a private house belonging to the head of the village council near Mehta Chowk. He filed a petition mentioning this fact and praying for a Writ of Habeas Corpus (No. 1777/89) for the production of his brother on 4 June 1989. Justice N.C. Jain who heard the petition appointed a warrant officer and when on 6 June 89 this warrant officer reached the house in which Malkiat Singh believed his brother to be confined, he found the house locked from outside.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 18, 1990
