To begin with four incidents:
On Apriil 17, this year, at around 7.45 P.M., communal terrorists came to the house of Bal Kishan, an ex-sarpanch of village Vanieke in Amritsar district. They took him at gunpoint to get him to show them the house of a particular Hindu family. When he showed them the house, they commanded him to call out the occupants. He refused. Then the terrorists scaled the wall and caught hold of a member of the family in the com- pound. They entered the house with him and lined up the three brothers of the household, which owns a small shop in the village. The mother wept and pleaded with the terrorists not to Kill them. She had just brought them up; she had nothing else left in the world.
The terrorists shot the brothers one by one. Darshan Kumar, one of the brothers, was asked to open his mouth. He opened it, and he was shot through the month. The aged uncle of the boys said, what more do you want from us, you might as well kill me, now. So they shot him dead.
The next morning, almost all the other Hindu families in the village left the village, even as four corpses lay on the open ground awaiting cremation. The police watched on (The one Hindu family determined to stay was that of Om Prakash. A CPI(M) worker; they were prepared to live there whatever the threat.)
The police had come only to perform the formalities.. They asked the villagers: why didn’t you catch the terrorists as they ran away? At that, the present sarpanch, Gian Singh, a Sikh ex- serviceman and an activist of Kirt! Kisan Union, got angry. If we had arms, he said, we would. But even if we keep a simple lathi, you beat us and take it away.
Village Sohl is also near the border in Amritsar district. On May 30 this year, the Central Reserve Police Force was on its patrol. They saw a scooter approaching. The boy riding the pillion was Sain, He was what is called “simple’’ perhaps
slightly retarded, but a harmless boy. The CRPF told the scooter driver to halt. When the boy saw the CRPF men, he could only understand that he should run. His only fault was that, out of the prevailing fear of the State machinery, he ran. The CRPF men chased him to a little hut where he locked himself in, in terror. His sisters came running after them. He was just frightened. They told the CRPF that they themselves would call him out of the room, if no harm would come to him. The CRPF assured the sisters that no harm would come to the boy. Then the sisters called him, and told him not to worry. At last’ he opened the door. But as soon as he did, he fled pack into a corner of the room and hid behind a drum. The sisters called him again. There was no reason to fear the CRPF, they told him ; he was after all unarmed, he had committed no crime, and he had no connections with any terrorist. . At last the boy came out slowly from his hiding place. As he entered the open, hands up, the CRPF men shot him. He lay on the ground for half an hour, still alive. He begged for water; the CRPF men refused, Finally he died. The CRPF drove away, leaving the formalities of the corpse to the local police. The boy now joined the ranks of the “terrorists” killed in “encounters”,
another achievement of our efficient State machinery in defence of national integrity.
A jeep moved outside village Mannan, in Amritsar district, on June 1 this year, at 10 a.m. In it were 4 youths who were said to be terrorists. The jeep was stopped by the CRPF. The youths said they were running a harvesting combine. They were released. As they drove off, they were suddenly called back. Then the suspects started running; two were caught; and two fled. One escaped altogether.
The other ran down a village street. His name was Bhupinder Singh Lala, son of a prosperous farmer and moneylender in Jhabal village. The CRPF shot him. He fell, but was. still alive. | He lay on the ground in this position for over an hour, begging for water. The villagers, pitying his condition, wanted to give him water, but they were stopped. Instead, he was beaten with the butts of rifles. Another of the suspects was beaten severely with lathis and rifle butts. The third was also beaten to a lesser extent. Finally Lala was dragged to the jeep, and thrown inside it. He died in the jeep. Then he was taken down from the jeep, and left there, and the CRPF drove away. Later! the” local police came and preformed the formalities. The boy’s” parents, too, came later. The body was still lying on the road.
They put their son’s body on a cot they washed its face:. The body was sent for post mortem.
On November 17, 1986, at a little past 10 p. m., a group of 9 workers were on their way to Dhariwal Woollen Mills in Gurdaspur district. Since the area was terrorist infested, workers from different villages used to gather and go for the night shift together. Among one batch were 7 Sikhs and 2 Hindus. Dhariwal Mill employs Jat Sikhs, caste Hindus, members of Scheduled Castes, and Christians—in all, 3,500 workers.
As the workers walked they could discern four or five shadowy figures with guns, standing below a tree. The armed men commanded the workers to raise their hands. Those with-)“” out turbans were just behind the Sikhs, so they could immediately flee. The terrorists started firing. Some fell. The communal ~ terrorists checked the bodies. One man was dead—Sardar Bachan Cingh. 4 were injured. The terrorists dragged the injured to a dry canal and threw them into it, threatening them that if they reported the incident their whole families would be killed. They commanded the injured men to raise Khalistani slogans.
Meanwhile, the Hindu workers who had run first reached a Border Security Force chowki 2 km away and reported the event. But the BSF did not move. After 25 minutes, local police- men came to perform the formalities.
Neither the Government nor the millmanagement helped the, injured—Balwinder Singh, Sardar Hardayal Singh, Sardar Ajit Singh, Kirpal Singh, and Karnail Singh. But they were met at the hospital by all the fellow workers of the mill, who condemned the attack and after them.
It is in this situation that the common people of Punjab are living today, sandwiched between sadistic and perverted terrorist gangs—including both the communal murderers and the State _ machinery. In brutality, arbitrariness, form, and content, the actions of the communal terrorists and the State machinery are alike. As significant as the actual number of murders, is the prevailing all-round atmosphere of repression from all quarters on the common people—Hindu and Sikh It is in the light of this situation that the team went on to examine the background and the roots of the present so-called “Punjab problem’’.
