From The Human Rights Observer
For showing the courage of his conviction, Simranjit Singh Mann is being pushed to the gallows, which reminds one of Nazi Germany. Ina letter to the President of India, Mann had expressed his anguish and indignation at the Indian Army’s bloody assault on the Golden Temple Complex in June 1984, and resigned his position as India’s Deputy Inspector General of Police.
He was arrested and charged
with “waging war” against India. An eminent Indian jurists, Ram Jethmalani, has made the following observations pertinent to this case: “If war could be waged by writing letters we would all become war heroes. Detention under the National Security was clamped down on him. For more than a year in searing heat and biting cold he was forced to sleep on a cement block with no quilt . until the Punjab High Court declared his detention invalid.”
“Instead of being released and allowed to join his family… the was again arrested … lodged there in lunatic ward until a legal threat to Minister of Internal Security brought some relief, The man still languishes in jail.”
After keeping him in a maximum security jail and torturing him for almost five years, the Indian Government has now implicated him (along with Atinderpal.
Singh, Professor Dalip Singh’ and Professor Jagmohan Singh) in a “conspiracy” allegedly leading to the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.
It is pertinent to note in this connection that the alleged assassin and conspirator (Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh) respectively were hanged in January 1989, despite appeals by the International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International and many Indian jurists and human rights organizations. Throughout this murky trial, the subservient judiciary did no task Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government to produce the Thakkar Commission’s Investigation Report on the assassination: Repeated requests by the defense counsel were rebuffed.
Throughout the trial of the late Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh, no mention was made of Simranjit Singh Mann and the newly “framed” Sikhs, including two eminent academicians from Bombay; As is pointed out by an Indian journalist:
“This was the first time in the legal history of India that a second charge sheet was filed after the execution of previously charged people,”
As a matter of fact, the officially appointed Thakkar Commission did not point its finger at Simranjit ‘Singh Mann and/or other accused Sikhs. On the contrary, the Thakkar Commission Report, he repeatedly pointed its finger at R.K. Dhawan (Indira Gandhi’s “chief. of staff’) and an eye witness to the assassination, for his possible role in this conspiracy. Once again, despite repeated requests by the defense counsel, the complaint Supreme Court did not summon RK. Dhawan to testify during the trial of two Sikhs who were sent to the gallows in January 1989. This was an example par excellence of judicially “contrived” murder. In this context, Arun Shourie’s comments are noteworthy:
“the President, while rejecting the mercy petition assigned no reason. The High Court while rejecting the petition assigned no reason The three judge Bench of the Supreme court, while rejecting the petition, assigned no reason. “Sorry rejected” is all they said…they certainly did not look so In reference to the newly “framed” Simranjit Singh Mann and others a prestigious Indian journal, India Today, has raised the following questions:
“Why did the Government take four and a half years to Come to the court with the charge sheet? “Why were the cases of Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh not withheld for a more comprehensive trial after the entire controversy was unraveled?”
“If the Government was so sure of Mann’s involvement why were iis emissaries making secret trips in Bhagalpur (Gail) by BSF aircraft till December (1988) to strike political deals with him?”
“How is it that Thakkar, who expended reams to weave his prickly web of suspicion around Dhawan, has said nothing about these conspiracies.”
‘The answers are relatively simple! Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in his struggle for political survival, is using the Sikhs as a scapegoat goat again in the manner of 1985 elections before which thousands of innocent Sikhs were burnt alive and tortured to death in New Delhi and other major cities of India,
Between the dreaded moment of the gallows and the day of the: next general elections there is but an agonizingly brief period of time. The voice of the civilized world can make all the difference and frustrate this evil design of India’s ruling Gandhi Dynasty, which is hell-bent on “staging a victory” by generating antiSikh hysteria and by “engineering” more judicial murders and mass killing of innocent Sikhs.
While the western world feels the shame of Nazi’s crime of genocide an evasive silence prevails in the western media and academia pertaining to the bleeding Sikh nation in Punjab. The western media instantly prints the official stories of misinformation against the Sikhs, they seldom report the cites of the victims of India’s state terrorism. Lamenting over a similar situation, Nobel Peace Laureate, Mr. Elie Weisel, observed: “What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”
Article extracted from this publication >> July 14, 1989
