The shocking incident at the Valtoha government hospital speaks volumes of the present human rights situation in Punjab, The Indian police deposits two dead bodies of Sikh militants at the mortuary of the hospital for postmortem. The doctor finds one of the “dead” persons breathing. He revives him. The Sikh militant gives in his identification and narrates the story of a fake encounter with him by the police. The doctor calls the militant’s relations and friends so that he could be transferred to Amritsar for better treatment. In the meantime, the local police officer, Sita Ram, appears on the scene, takes away the militant forcibly from the relations and friends and after about two three hours, returns with the militant’s dead body once again. The incident would have gone unnoticed as thousands of such other incidents are going in Punjab had it not been for communist leader Satpal Dang who investigated it and issue a Press release narrating the story. An Indian Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Kuldip Singh and Justice S.C, Agarwal saw the story in a Punjab newspaper and issued a suo moto notice to the state of Punjab for reply. The court eventually ordered the arrest of the police officer concerned and his trial for murder.
The Indian propagandists are not tired of telling the world that India is a democracy and that the Indian courts take notice of any violations of human rights on a complaint being made or even suo moto for redress, these tall claims fly on the face of the reality in Punjab and other Indian states. The Valtoha incident is only a tip of the iceberg. Thousands of other similar cases go unreported. This particular case was taken notice of only because one of the persons witness to the drama was a C.P.1, man who reported the matter to Dang. Communists are not known in Punjab as champions of human rights. If anything, they have been the ones to publicly plead for more laws to arm the police with greater powers against Sikhs, The Indian media itself writes in tune with what Dang and his comrades speak. Since a Sikh communist happened to know the victim through his wife, he rushed to see the drama of death at the hands of the Indian police. It was another coincident that Dang agreed to issue a Press note on the matter, The Indian media, as stated above, is ever ready to publish the views of communist leaders like Dang. Thus the incident saw the light of day. It was again a rarest of the rare incident when the Indian ‘supreme court suo moto took up the issue and summoned the Punjab police officers for explanation. Interestingly, no bench of the Punjab and Haryana high court took up the issue although it should have concerned it in the first instance. For years now thousands of telegrams and written representations as well as writ petitions have been moved in the Punjab and Haryana high court by relations and friends of the victims of the Indian state’s highhandedness. No effective action has been taken in any such representation by the court. Even in the Indian Supreme Court hundreds of similar cases have been lying unattended to for years. When in 1985, the then Akali leader Harchand Singh Longowal moved an application for bail in the supreme court, the present chief justice, who then was a judge of the supreme court, had observed that his frail shoulders were too weak to bear the burden of taking a decision on ordering the release of Longowal. Such is the might of the Indian state Vis a Vis the judiciary. The Indian Supreme Court has also been sitting over numerous petitions challenging the constitutionality of several antihuman rights laws. In this sorry state of affairs the Sikhs in their thousands have been languishing in India’s jails for a decade or so without trial or even charges. Despite this general judicial apathy towards the plight of Sikhs, the Valtoha incident comes as a fresh telling proof of the massacre of human rights by India in Punjab. It is indeed distressing to note that the U.S, administration does not take adequate notice of the plight of Sikhs in Punjab in keeping with its belief that India must stay in one place to keep south East Asia undisturbed. In effect, it implies for the U.S. acceptance of human rights violations by India in Punjab (and elsewhere in India, barring Kashmir, which is “‘disputed”) in the long term interest of keeping Southeast Asia undisturbed. It is this kind of thinking in Washington that encourages Delhi to commit more violations of human rights, No wonder, there is certain relationship between the U.S. policy and the nights violations in India, That indeed is a pity with us have public Opinion Continue 10 be tolerant of this kind of India US, relationship?
Article extracted from this publication >> November 12, 1993
