Nothing exposes India’s criminal handling of Punjab more than the recent Supreme Court strictures against its top police officer, K.P.S.Gill. The court passed the strictures in connection with the complaint brought before it by a Sikh from Amritsar district, Inder Singh, who alleged that D.S.P, Baldev Singh had abducted seven members of his family ranging in age from 14 years to 85 years and liquidated them on the basis of a mere suspicion that certain members of the family had a hand in the militant arranged abduction of a brother of the D.S.P. a few years ago. The family’s abduction took place on October 29, 1991, but the police registered a case only in March 1994. The Supreme Court noted that an S.P, of Special police had investigated the case and had reported that D.S.P. Baldev Singh was responsible for the crime but K.PS. Gill in his affidavit said that he came to know of the incident only in July 1994 when Inder Singh filed the case in the Supreme Court. The court has disbelieved Gill and has ordered C.B.1, chief K, Vijay Rama Rao to investigate the entire matter and give his findings in a sealed cover to be opened by the Judges of the Supreme Court themselves. The C.B.I. will make a report within one month and will also go into Gill’s own role in the cover up.
It must be noted that India’s Supreme Court had been sleeping all these years on far more serious complaints brought before it by the aggrieved Sikhs from time to time, In one case, a lady Sikh officer from Punjab had accused the Punjab police chief K.P.S. Gill himself of subjecting her to sexual harassment but the court dismissed her complaint. This gave freedom to the entire police force to do what it wanted in Punjab. Consequently, hundreds of cases of sexual harassment, including rape of women, have been reported. So much 50 the grandsons of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh with the help of KP.S. Gill’s men abducted a French woman, Katia, and subjected her to a cruel treatment variously spelled out as rape and molestation. According to India’s Economic Times, Gill undertook to cover up the crime of Beant’s grandson and for eight days the police did not identify or arrest the criminal grandson of the chief minister, Beant Singh himself tried to minimize the gravity of the incident by saying that his grandson had not raped the woman, he had only molested her and that the matter was not very serious.
Already, the high court of Punjab has convicted to one month’s imprisonment Punjab’s chief secretary Ajit Singh Chatha. All these incidents conclusively demon Strata the stage and quality of India’s administration in Punjab. The Indian government does not feel called upon to make any changes in its administration in Punjab. It remains wedded to a policy of confrontation and repression that is precisely why India chose a military officer as new Governor of Punjab in place of a police officer, Surinder Nath, who died in a plane crash some time ago. In any case, if a change is brought about, it is quite likely that the state administration’s present guilty men will be elevated to still higher positions elsewhere.
‘The only way to force India to change its mad policy in Punjab is to expose the criminal deeds of the Indian administration throughout the world. There is a method in India’s madness. And that method is common to its administration in Punjab, Kashmir and the north eastern states, where military, police or intelligence officers are calling the shots.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 23, 1994
