Sheltered by laws that make them virtually unaccountable the police are gradually becoming part of an evolving system in which the law grovels before authority instead of the other way around. Authority garbed in uniform baton in hand revolver at the hip will lose legitimacy the moral mooring of the state if it rises above the Constitution Even as the police score for countless citizens the price is cascading brutalization of life If the police continue with their arbitrary ways driven variously by greed revenge corruption performance yardsticks the need to cover up or just power the force could wind up becoming its own worst enemy.
In an increasing number of instances the Punjab Police have been subverting the process of law by stalling inquiries and shoving those indicting them under the carpet. They have been killing suspects in false encounters. And operating a bloated and unaccounted secret service fund running into crores of rupees in an arbitrary and dangerous fashion.
The police claim this policy of “bending the rules for operational compulsions” has been a roaring success. But their own statistics show that the policy could be acting as a catalyst in the swelling of militant ranks.
These statistics should strike some caution into the machismo of policemen. When the distinction between the lawbreaker and the law-enforcer blurs the state loses its authority there are many other pernicious factors that are increasingly motivating the polices highhanded conduct: prime among these being the lure of money and power.
Truth has been the main victims. Many of the cases of killing of militants as reported by the police and dutifully carried by newspapers are plain disinformation In the case of hardcore terrorists people generally overlook the summary executions. But a seething resentment is born each time the police jackboots innocents. This resentment breeds militants and negates every success the police may achieve.
Death by Ambush Bump them off and blame it on the militants
Routinely newspapers report that so-and-so militant was killed when the police party escorting him was ambushed by militants. The fact that it is almost always the militants who are killed in the ambush and hardly ever a policeman exposes the police lie.
In a more recent case the police said that three militants Sahib Singh Dalbir Singh and Balwinder Singhdied in an ambush near Thardhe village in Majitha police district on September 13 as they were being escorted by a police party for the recovery of weapons. Later the body of another militant was found at the encounter site along with an AK47 and some ammunition. However an Amritsar officer admitted there had been no ambush and all four were already in police custody. In other words they were summarily executed.
Engineering escapes A ruse to keep the accused in illegal custody
The police have devised many ways to keep the judiciary off their back. One of them is proclaiming that a militant has escaped. He can then be kept in custody for an unlimited period to extract information by whatever means At any given time there are 200-300 people in such illegal police custody Recently Kuldip Singh Fauji a militant who actually escaped after seven months in detention told pressmen how he had met many militants in CRPF centers who had supposedly escaped or been killed.
How prolonged custody is often utilized by the police to torture and brainwash an accused came to light in the case of Gurdial Singh alias Arur Singh of Dalla village in Gurdaspur district. A member of the original Panthic Committee when he reportedly slipped out of the polices hands two years ago he was believed to have been killed However investigations reveal that he is still alive and had made an appearance at his village. “We were successful in virtually transplanting his brain with sustained interrogation” revealed a senior police officer last fortnight. What he meant was that Arur Singh has been forced to cooperate with the police.
Cat and Mouse The menace of undercover agents
Cat is the police code word for an operator used in counterterrorist activity Enjoying impunity many of them tum to extorting money and generally break the law. But when a Cat errs in identifying militants he can virtually write some innocents death warrant. One case related to four villagers who were travelling in a white Maruti car on July 12. They were signaled to stop near Ambala in Haryana by some jeep borne policemen in plain clothes. When they sped away the police followed them and opened fire killing two adults and a child.
One of the two slain men the police exulted was Nirvair Singh Nindi a top militant carrying a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head “He had killed over 100 people” the police party told the gathered crowd
But when local villages arrived at the spot they protested against the police action by blocking traffic on the Delhi Chandigarh highway because those killed were an Ambala businessman Jaswinder Singh 28 his son 4 and brother-in-law Jasbir Singh They had mistaken the policemen in mufti for terrorists and did not stop. The police on the other hand were misguided by a Cat who identified Jaswinder Singh as Nirvair Singh. The police ostensibly in a rush to claim the reward opened fire.
Check post encounters Fire first ask questions later
Once bitten twice shy. The Government is no longer instituting inquiries into alleged police excesses after a few of them indicted some officers.
Contradicting the police version the villagers claimed that Sukhwinder Singh was on his way to Delhi after visiting his family and was shot dead by the police after he was accused by another villager of ramming his truck into his shop.
On a complaint the governor asked the then Jalandhar commissioner N.K. Arora to look into the matter. Arora found some incriminating evidence against the ASl and recommended an inquiry by a gazeued officer. But DSP Balkar Singh who conducted the inquiry did a whitewash job. He said: “The AST is totally innocent and I exonerate him.” In June this year with Chief Minister Beant Singhs concurrence the Home Department asked state police chief K.P.S.Gill to have a case of murder filed against the ASI. But the police are yet to comply with the order.
In the other case Sukhdev Kaur learmed on April 28 that her husband Karnail Singh a driver in the Customs and Central Excise Department at Amritsar had been detained following an altercation with one Gulshan Kumar At the Sardar police station they met Karnail Singh in the lockup. But the next day the police told her that he was not in their custody. Later the police corrected themselves saying Kamail Singh was let off on May 29. And after SP.Srivastava regional customs collector approached Beant Singh the official version became “Inquiries have revealed that Karnail Singh was killed by terrorists on May 1”
The inquiry had revealed just the contrary. The top secret report of the Chandigarh based SP Gian Singh said that Karnail Singh was picked up in an inebriated state by a DSP and later interrogated by Rajinderpal Singh and his staff “Due to torture or mishandling he died on the night of the arrest. His body was taken away and thrown into a nearby drain”
Feign ignorance say “Neither wanted nor arrested”
Often these days when a person goes missing but is believed to have been picked up by the police the police deny outright they have anything to do with it. Sometimes they are technically right because the person is detained by police officers from outside the district. In any case there have been so many disappearances in Punjab that even Amnesty International took up 24 cases with the Indian Government in February. Predictably the Punjab Police denied any knowledge about each one of them. But S.L.Kapur former Punjab chief secretary wrote to the Union home secretary on April 12 “The police denials are too general and not credible.”
One case in the Amnesty list was of Ram Singh Billing a Sangrur journalist and human rights activist. He was picked up on January 3 by the police from Bhogiwal village in the presence of many villagers. When the Sangrur police queried by the Center claimed: “Billing was neither wanted nor arrested by us.” An IG posted in Chandigarh however admitted that Billing died at the polices hands. Apparently from torture.
Perhaps the worst case is of an entire family of seven (Sadhu Singh 80 his son and five grandsons including a 12 year old) of Bagga village in Majitha police district arrested by the police on October 291991. All because says Sandhu Singhs brother Inder Singh DSP Baldev Singh had nursed a personal grudge against the family.
The police later implicated the seven in the kidnapping of a relation of the DSP. Baldev Singh says he had released them. Butthe factis since no case was registered against them he took them along when he was posted out of Majitha. In Majitha SSP Paramjit Singh says that since no one lodged a complaint about the family being untraceable he cannot take any action. Inder Singh however claims that he had even knocked at the chief minister’s door
Mercenaries in uniform Massive unaccounted funds create chaos
The mush for claiming cash rewards is turning the police into mercenaries. Besides the rewards for killing listed militants (annual outlay for the purpose: Rs 113 crore) the department gives “unannounced rewards” for killing unlisted militants. Every week the IGS of various ranges send their lists to Additional DG (Intelligence) O.P Sharma. The amount can vary from Rs 40000 to Rs 5 lakh.
Though Sharma claims that each case is thoroughly scrutinized the system is far from foolproof. In one case the then Patiala police chief claimed money for some information provided by a source even though the militant was killed in a chase by a naka party.
There is money even in seizing arms A recent circular from the police headquarters reads: “Rs 7500 for every General Purpose Machine Gun captured. Rs 5000 for an AK74 or an AK47 and Rs 3000 for a sten gun” “The rewards will make mercenaries out of policemen” rues a senior officer who was earlier with the Home Department.
But how is this expenditure accounted for? Last year’s police budget had set aside Rs 70 lakh for “secret service expenditure.” But the actual spending was Rs 2.90 crore This is apart from the money sent by the Center in 1990 Rs 1 crore and the same amount during Julio Ribeiros tenure as police chief who handled it himself. One of the district police chiefs was given Rs 45 lakh for disbursement in a single month sources say.
What’s more the operation of the secret fund is only known to a handful of senior police officers the DGP additional DGS of intelligence and operations and IG (crime). Even the home secretary is kept out of it. Whatever records are maintained is erased after a few weeks.
Though after his “bullet for a bullet” statement Ribeiro came to be known as the brain behind questionable police methods DGP Gills role is no less important. In 1989 while talking to India Today Ribeiro showed a note dated January 271987 from Gill then his deputy lying out of the policy which seems to have been followed since.
The summary executions policy has the blessings of some key officials at the Center as borne out by a series of secret communications from Delhi. One such letter of December 30, 1991 from V.G.Vaidya the special director now promoted as director of the IB to Gill came in the wake of SSP Sanjeev Gupta inadvertently justifying fake encounters. Wrote Vaidya:”They (district officials) should refrain from even implicitly hinting that they indulge connive or approve of anything which is in violation of the law of the land. Their professional compulsions in executive action should not get reflected in their public utterances.””
The so called professional compulsions are clearly subverting the law of the land. The former advocate general of Punjab G.S Grewal warns that such a trend could herald legal anarchy predictably talk of police excesses is propaganda for the Punjab Government.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 13, 1992
