Punjab Police Service Association led by former police chief of Tarn Taran district, Punjab, Ajit Singh Sandhu, held a meeting at Jalandhar last week to demand of the Indian government to enact a law to bar courts from entertaining or investigating cases of police excesses and fix a cutoff date, say, December 23, 1995, so that all cases prior to that day are simply ignored. According to Indian media reports, as many as 70 Punjab officers participated in the meeting. These included four serving chiefs of districts. Interestingly, even the Punjab police chief, Sube Singh, too, joined the meeting for a brief while. The meeting took place in the context of criminal proceedings against dozens of Punjab police officers at present underway mostly initiated at the instance of Supreme Court or high court on complaints by dependents of Sikh youths. Most of the cases pertain to abduction and murder. These include the disposal of 983 unclaimed bodies by the police in Amritsar district a few years ago. Also under investigation is the disappearance and possible murder of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra who had collected evidence to expose the disposal of dead bodies in mass.
The Punjab police officers argue that they were waging a war against secession in Punjab and that, in the process; they may have committed certain excesses. Such excesses, they say, are unavoidable in the given circumstances and that these should be excused in the “national interest.” Otherwise, no police officer will come.
Forward to defend India’s integrity if challenged in future. This is not the first time that the demand for cutoff date is being made. Even when chief minister Beant Singh was alive, such a demand was raised by senior police officers but evidently the matter did not proceed any further although Beant Singh then assured the police officers that the Punjab government would finance their defence in courts. Evidently, with the cases against police officers progressing apace, the affected officers have sought to mount fresh pressure on the government and held a massive show of strength, at Jalandhar. Surprisingly, the Punjab Police Service Association is headed by an officer who is suspended from the service on the specific instructions of the Supreme Court and is the main accused in the unclaimed body’s case as well as in the Khalra case. It is strange that the Punjab police chief Sube Singh himself joined such a conclave even though briefly more so when chief minister Harcharan Singh Brar reversed his predecessor’s order regarding defence of the officers involved in criminal case.
The kind of emotional appeal made by the accused officers to drop the cases against them is unlikely, under the present circumstances, to be headed by anyone in India except the fascist groups like the R.S.S.B.J.P. or unscrupulous elements like Harkishen Singh Surjeet. Most of the cases have been launched not by the executive but on order from courts, mostly the Supreme Court, which cannot be reversed. Any law passed by the Indian Parliament or amendments to the criminal code introduced by the Indian home ministry will go to the Supreme Court. Indian home minister, Inderjih Gupta, is a tough politician and it will not be an easy task for criminal officers to have their way through him. In the circumstances, there is no serious danger of the wheel of justice being stopped or reversed but the blackmailing effects of men like Ajit Singh Sandhu are noteworthy and a timely caution to the Indian authorities is entirely warranted. Besides, many of the cases against Punjab police officers pertain to killings indulged in connection with private property disputes or such other cases.
The meeting also passed a resolution favoring a ban on out of turn promotions in future. They asked a colleague, D.S.P. Bachan Singh Randhawa, to withdraw his plea in court challenging the out of turn promotions in the department. The meeting assured Randhawa that his claim for promotion would be supported. [Tis obvious, according to media reports, that the main beneficiary of the out of turns promotions are also the ones who joined the Jalandhar conclave. It is entirely probable that these are also the persons who were given secret financial rewards for killings. All said and done, the Jalandhar meeting represented the most diehard criminals involved in all kinds of crimes in Punjab. They had been hard picked by J.F. Rebeiro and K.P.S, Gill to perform the assigned jobs; they were bound to face the music one day. The Indian state must not allow them to escape the clutches of law. Otherwise, it will face more ignoring and isolation at the international level.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 2, 1996
