The illegal abduction of Jaswant Singh Khalra, General Secretary of the Shiromani Akali Dal’s Human Rights Wing, is already a publicized case, He is an important functionary Of an organization that has exposed the possibility that the thousands who have “disappeared” in the Amritsar district might have ended up being created by the officials of Punjab police as unclaimed unidentified bodies, as shown by the government’s own records. A petition asking for an independent inquiry into these cannibalistic operations of the Punjab police is pending before the Supreme Court.
The rule of law is one of those binding principles of the Indian nationhood that in Punjab has constantly been undermined by those who masquerade to be its instruments. The Supreme Court, we hope, would eventually act on this petition to mitigate the anxieties of the people of Punjab that to be Indian citizens they must forever remain prisoners of a hermetic system of inhumanity, which the working of the Punjab police has come to epitomize. The legitimacy of these anxieties is borne out by the fate that has befallen Jaswant Singh Khalra.
As a crusader for the human rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution, Jaswant Singh Khalra represents the precise antithesis to the law of jungle, which the predators of the Punjab police, like Tarn Taran’s Senior Superintendent of Police, are decided to perpetuate, The Punjab government has not only failed’ to rescue Khalra from his necrophilia abductors, it even seems to acquiesce in their transparently flimsy attempts to cover up the crime, A story carried by the Asian Age on October 29, 1995 .
Punjab police has no clue on rights activist shows that the State government is currently engaged in forging the verisimilitude of an investigation by which it may get off the Supreme Court’s hook in the habeas corpus matter concerning Khalra’s abduction, The Asian Age story mentions two theories on Khalra’s “disappearance,” which supposedly guide the police investigations: [1] Khalra has been abducted or eliminated by militants. [2] Factional’ rivalry in the Khalra Cooperative Agricultural Survey Society, of which Jaswant Singh Khalra is a founder member, explains his “disappearance,”
To support the theory of rivalry, the story cites two threatening letters that Khalra had supposedly written to the members of the faction inimical to him, The Punjab police have supposedly got hold of these letters that feline them to accept the second theory to be true, The story in the Asian Age overlooks the most significant point about these theories. Both of them find mention in the counter affidavit, prepared by Sukhdev Singh China of Amritsar police, the Punjab government filed before the Supreme Court on September 18, 1995, the affidavit also refers to the threatening letters. The same affidavit mentions the Tarn Taran’s SSP being on leave during the week in which Khalra got “picked up” to be precise from Sept. 5 10 11. These points mentioned in the Punjab government’s counter affidavit before the Supreme Court, when junta posed against their reiteration by the investigating officers of the Amritsar police as independently arrived at Conclusions, give out the clue. The investigating officers had been indoctrinated on what theories to serve to the Supreme Court, with the evidence of the letters already being in their possession.
Annexure 9 in the Punjab government’s counter affidavit is a police message originating from the SSP of Tarn Taran on September 6, the date on which Khalra had been picked up. Although the SSP was admittedly on leave that day, to prepare for the marriage of his daughter in Chandigarh; the message says “Jaswant Singh Khalra has not been found to be picked up by any police party of police district Tarn Taran.” The categorical assertion indicates either that it is a mechanical statement of denial, or that the SSP remote controls his force in Tarn Taran, Either way, the message loses out the credibility.
The story in the Asian Age refers to the police complaint that Khalra’s wife, Ms. Paramjit Kaur, is refusing to cooperate with the police probe. The complaint is the ultimate possible insult that can be heaped on the wife, perhaps already the widow, of a person who she knows to have been picked up by the Punjab police officers, Punjab government’ sown counter affidavit mentions that the Amritsar police registered a criminal case of Jaswant Singh Khalra’s abduction on Sept. 6 based on Ms. Paramjit Kaur’s own statement of police. In cooperating with the investigators, she could do no more than share her knowledge of the truth. No doubt, the investigating officers of the Punjab police must expect her to move on their strings like a marionette, possibly also to sign an affidavit exonerating them of all possible blame. This way, Ms. Paramjit Kaur cannot cooperate.
As reported by two eyewitnesses, Mr, Khaleda’s abductors were uniformed commandos of the Punjab police who came in two vehicles: One light blue colored Mauritian the second a regular police jeep, The eyewitnesses have also identified four officers of the Tam Taran police who were leading the operation, No credence can be attached to the denials of these officers, unless the Supreme Court can test their veracity through an independent investigation, helped by the human rights workers who understand the working of the Punjab police, The information since obtained from the serving police officers confirms that Khalra was being held under torture at Sarhali police station in Tar Taran on Sept. 22. That night he was moved out to an unknown destination. The witnesses who can give evidence to establish the truth are justifiably afraid of the Punjab police, whose propensity to kill, ostensibly in the national interest, has received silent connivance, if not open commendation, from all the institutions of the Indian State in the past.
Eleven years ago in the national capital, precisely these days in November 1984, thousands of innocent Sikhs men, women and children had been hacked to pieces and burnt ‘on tires set aflame with kerosene.
Policemen and the army had looked on. The courts, when approached of order a judicial inquiry into the orchestration of the pogrom, had contemptuously dismissed the petitions. Eleven years later, the issue of thousands of illegal cremations carried out by the Punjab police in the Amritsar district alone is pending before the Supreme Court.
Jaswant Singh Khaleda, who exposed the connection between “the disappeared and “the cremated has himself disappeared. The affidavit of Ajit Singh Bains, retired Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, in the petition for the writ of habeas crop us on Khaleda, mentions the threat the SSP Tarn Taran had issued to Khalda sometime before he disappeared: “Stop your activities or else you will also become an unidentified cremated body!”
The point for the Supreme Court to decide is whether the threat has been carried out or not. The court has already allowed the Punjab police more than eight weeks to cover up the crime, ‘The least it could do now is to order an independent investigation that may save the testimony of truth from being, gagged. Note: One might ask Mr. Brar if his concern and interest goes for those political prisoners held in U.S. Jails such as Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhmandir Singh Sandhu.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 17, 1995
