Role of the Panchayats
Village Panchayats are much more active than important officers in the government. The magnificent way they go to the Police Station collecting with them as many villagers as they can, the moment they heard a man had been arrested from the village, had saved many men from being shot down and shown as ‘encounter deaths’. They make it known to the Police that they were witnesses to the arrest of the man from his own house and not from outside the village where he could have confronted the police with his revolver. We heard people expressing their deep gratitude to their courageous Sarpanchas and the members of the Panchayat; the entire village rising as one man and marching to the police station has become a common sight these days. Fifty-year-old Joginder Singh, a much harassed father of young Gurcharan Singh told us how ‘‘Panchayats of four villages went to the police and got my son released on 30. 1.85; my son who was working as a mechanic in Rourkela factory in Orissa in the last two years and had come home on leave in December 1984 was suddenly arrested without a warrant and without a charge sheet on 10.1.85. We sent him back to Rourkela on 16.1.85 three days after his release but the police were after us, so much so that we had to leave our home to save ourselves from harassment. The police wanted my son back, I told them that I would give them proof that he had been working in Orissa and had returned to his job. This did not satisfy them so ultimately I myself went to Orissa and fetched my son on 20.3.85. All the Panchayat members of my village and a large number of villagers took my son to the police station and the police kept him there in spite ofthe precaution that the Panchayat had taken the police showed that my son was an extremist and he was carrying a revolver and was captured in an ‘encounter’ on 28.3.85 with the police, when the police party was patrolling Kanhawan RS. He was produced before Court on 29.3.85. He is still in Gurdaspur jail.
Police corruption and fake ‘encounters’
‘Encounters’ are common and are concocted for various reasons one being extortion of money. Deedar Singh (40) son of Subedar Acchar Singh, brother of an ex-Army Havaldar Harjap Singh (56) comes from a family which gave its sons to the Army since before India became independent: but without warrant or any charge sheet he was dragged into the police jeep from his tube-well in the evening of 27.3.85. Early next morning Harjap Singh with the Sarpanch and 50 men from his village went to CIA Staff, Batala and found Deedar Singh badly tortured; they went again on the 29th to see him and gave him tea and something to eat. On the 30th morning they were surprised to read in the local newspaper that Deedar Singh and Jitendra Singh Ghuman were caught in an encounter at Bhuller Bridge near Batala with rifles and pistols on March 29. Deedar Singh was arrested on March 27 from his home and was inside the jail throughout but the encounter was shown on March 29! Harjap Singh rushed to the police station—‘‘I paid Rs. 5000 to SSP Pandey and Rs. 2000 to S.I. Anant Ram to stop him killing my brother. He is alive and is still in jail.”
Shri Bhagowalia told us how pre-emptive efforts saved another young man’s life. Gurmail Singh of Dhilwan was arrested from his home at midnight by S. I. Joginder Singh of Kadian P. S. Sinsuj it was going to be a fake encounter, the Sarpanch with 500 villagers gheraoed the police station and Balwant Singh Udowalia an IAS Officer posted in Assam sent telegrams to the SSP, DSP and met the D.C. and also S.S.P. Pondey and made it clear that he would be a witness to prove how the police have been killing people if Gurmail Singh is killed in a false encounter.
Encounter deaths
But all young men are not as fortunate. There is the tragic case of Hira Singh (21) of Kila Lal Singh village, P. S. Sadar Batala, Distt. Gurdaspur—we visited his home and met his mother Jagir Kaur. It was one of the most moving moments during our tour of Punjab; remembering that the last wish of her son to meet her once was not allowed and he was killed before she could see him, she burst into uncontrollable tears. Jagir Kaur never had much happiness, her husband Sulakhan Singh, an opium addict, used to beat her and there used to be constant quarrels; Hira Singh used to resent this even when small; his father had 4 acres of land which his neighbor Sohan Singh, a landlord and son-in-law of Congress-I M.P. (ex) Teja Singh Akarpuri wanted to grab and used to supply opium to Sulakhan Singh to hasten his end. When Hira Singh came of age there was a fight between the father and the son in which Sulakhan Singh died and Hira Singh was accused of murder under section 304 (IPC) but later was aquitted; this was not liked by Sohan Singh and conniving with the police he began to harass this boy daily—so much so Hira Singh had to leave his village and seek shelter in the Golden Temple. During his absence the police got him involved in a number of untraceable crimes. Then came Operation Blue Star and on June 4 an old friend of Hira Singh, one Panthjit Singh of village Goharpur came to the Golden Temple only to be killed during the Army action. Seeing that his friend had been killed, Hira Singh decided to change his own name to Panthjit Singh so that in future as Panthjit Singh he would escape police harassment. He believed that they would assume that Hira Singh was one of ihose killed in the Army action. But things did not work out that way. The army prepared a list of arrested men before sending them to Gurdaspur jail and gave the list to the police for informing the relatives. Getting the information Panthjit Singh’s parents came to meet their son but found Hira Singh instead. Things moved fast after that and the police took him to the CIA staff Batala, tortured him there for two days when the SGPC Secretary of the Local Unit, Batala, went to see him in the jail, he was near death.
Habeas Corpus
“Hearing of this on July, 3, I applied for Habeas Corpus through Gurdaspur Court apprehending that my son would be killed either in a fake encounter or otherwise because Sohan Singh and Mohinder Singh had gone and seen the police. For 3 days I went to Gurdaspur Jail to meet him and failed, not knowing that my son had meanwhile been whisked away to CIA Staff, Batala. “But I did not know at that time, which I learnt later from a friend with access to police sources that Hira Singh was going to be killed on the same night of July 3.
“I also heard later that when asked about the last wish, my son said—‘I want to meet my mother.’
‘And so he was then brought at 2.30 a.m. to the village, but not to meet me, but to be killed in a false encounter by the side of nearby UPDC Canal. According to the postmortem report he was shot through the brain and the abdomen. The police story as published in the Punjab Keshari and Ajit of July 5, 1985 was that two extremists were running away on their cycles when the police chased them. One had a pistol. One man escaped and the other who was killed was Hira Singh.
“On July 5, the Military and Police did not permit any of my friends and neighbors to come for the cremation in our village. Only my second son (Dalbir Singh), my daughter (Daljit Kaur) and myself were permitted. For two months my house was cordoned off by the police and nobody was allowed to come. But the Military Police came from Batala a month after the cremation and took my younger son, Dalbir aged 15-years, beating him severely all the way to the bank of the same canal where Hira Singh had been shot. In spite of the terror of the police and the military, some village ladies including my daughter and sister presented themselves before the military and asked to be shot first before Dalbir was killed. Thus he was saved.
“Sohan Singh is still after Dalbir. He has accused him of keeping a revolver, but the police had failed to find any. So no case has been yet started.
“I am living in poverty because the land had already been mortgaged by my husband. Hira Singh was the only earning member of the family, and used to feed us by working as laborer on other people’s land.” ;
Today it is Hira Singh, tomorrow Dalbir, the day after another; this accumulated suffering will not remain confined to individual hearts but will grow into an all-consuming fire. The Army and the Police while jointly indulging in this favorite pastime of torturing and killing innocent people are actively fanning that flame to grow.
There was another encounter which was shown to have taken place at Bani Lodhi in North Jaimal Singh Tehsil; it was alleged that two men Suba Singh and Jaspal Singh were coming from Pakistan border—there was a fight and then the police shot them down. This case has created a stir in Gurdaspur district because not merely it was so utterly false but against a man who was highly respected. Suba Singh’s wife, has filed a case of murder against the Pathankot police in October 1984 which is still pending though eight months have passed. We visited the home of Suba Singh in Talwandi village, P. S. Deepa Nagar (District Gurdaspur) and met his wife who has not yet recovered from the sudden shock of her husband’s murder.
Suba Singh (35) was a teacher in Government Primary School, highly respected person, a good hockey player who had been selected for participating in the Punjab State Hockey competition. He and a constable Mukhtiar Singh of Deena Nagar PS was friends and used to visit each other; on 2.10.84 while returning from school, Suba Singh dropped in at his friend’s place. Pushing the door of his room open, he found Jaspal Singh Gill—a very well known, hockey player of Punjab and a friend of Suba Singh thrown in a comer of the room, his mouth gagged and all trussed up like a bundle. He saw some constables also there who seemed to be surprised to see him there. Suba Singh quickly closed the door and meeting his friend Mukhtiar Singh on the way told him what he had seen. Reaching home he described the incident to his wife and father. At about 6 p.m. Mukhtiar Singh came, and told him that he had come to fetch him as the SHO wanted to meet him. Suba Singh left with him and that was the last the family would see him. Feeling worried, when he did not return for a long time, his wife and son went to Deena Nagar to find out from Mukhtiar Singh what had happened; there they found the police jeep ready to leave from Deena Nagar, inside were a half-conscious Suba Singh in handcuffs, Jaspal Singh all tied up, S.S.P. Pandey, Mukhtar Singh and a few other constables; it took the Pathankot road and disappeared. Next day on 3.10.84, finding out that they had been taken to Pathankot, they went to the P.S. Pathankot but were not allowed to see him; again on the 4th they went but were told there was no such person called Suba Singh there. On 5th morning they read in a local newspaper that the police had an encounter with Jaspal Singh Gill and another unknown person in which both were killed. Rushing back to Gurdaspur they found from the photograph of the ‘unknown person at Kalanaur P. S. that it was Suba Singh. The post-mortem report makes it clear that he had been ‘severely injured in his right hyp and spine prior to his death’ Suba Singh had no land and his family of 4 small children, wife and old father depended entirely on his small income. Who will look after the family, now that he is dead? Suba Singh by inadvertently opening the door or Mr. Singh’s room happened to be the only person who had seen Jaspal Singh Gill either having been already killed or going to be killed by the police. So he had to be silenced; all evidence had to be wiped out of arbitrary arrest torture, killing. Thus a fake encounter story was put before the Police of two terrorists coming from Pakistan.
How the repressive policy is affecting the economy of the small peasant
We often read about these deaths in encounters—extremists coming from or going towards Pakistan border, roaming around in notorious Gurdaspur—the terrorist prone district as it is called these days— with rifles and revolvers. The police get rewarded for committing these cold-blooded murders—for these is nothing but murders. They get promoted for savage repression found only in Fascist States (all in the name of curbing terrorism). We who read these reports seldom realize the enormity of the tragedy that befalls a rural family when it sudden- ly loses a young healthy worker in the field or a lone bread-winner as in Suba Singh’s case—apart from the immeasurable desolation and helpless anguish the women suffer. Case after case has come to our notice—we shall mention only one more of such unjustifiable killing. Three innocent peasants of Mand village in P.S. Sri Hargovindpur were declared proclaimed offenders (this being the first step before killing in false encounters) and then arrested from the house and then killed by the police in false encounter in S.S.P. Pandey’s presence. We visited Mand village and met Mahinder Kaur, the sorrowing wife of Pyare Singh one of the peasants killed on September 23, 1984 along with his two friends in his own house, Mahinder Kaur looking on: “At about 2.30 p.m. suddenly police came and went Straight to the tubewell where my husband Pyare Singh was working, and told him to hand over the revolver and some other weapons which he was supposed to have had. Suddenly, I heard shots from inside our house; rushing back, I found that our two guests Gumam Singh (32) of Toriwal village and Mangal Singh (36) of Mikey village had been shot dead. Soon after S.S.P. Pandey arrived and asked my husband to produce the weapons, which of course he could not. We are small farmers with a few acres of land. We don’t keep weapons. But my husband asked why our two guests had been shot down. I heard the A.S.P. Joginder Singh whisper to his constables that they should not have shot down those two men—‘they were good people’, but the Head Constable Jarnail Singh insisted that my husband must be shot as he was refusing to produce the weapons, and immediately they shot him. They dumped the three dead bodies in their jeep and arrested our neighbours Dalip Singh, Balbinder Singh, Amrik Singh and Dewan Singh and took them along with the dead men to Batala Interrogation Centre. After 10 days of torture and finding no weapon they released them but went on visiting them forcing them to say that it was a case of accident. The Panchayat and 20 persons from our village went to Batala to claim the body of my husband but it was refused to them and they were threatened to be shot down if they insisted on getting it back. So I never saw him again and there was no postmortem report.” We asked, “‘did you not go to Court?” “‘No’’, she said, “There is none to hear.”
In their wide world ‘there is none to hear—simple words said without malice but with such frightening finality.
Women: courage in the face of humiliation and death
“My world is lying in shambles all around me.” J. P. had written while languishing in the loneliness of his prison. We understood the truth of these moving words when we met the women in the Punjab villages. J.P.’s word was the whole of India which he had loved and lived for; a woman’s world is her home, her husband, her children, her land, her cattle and the golden corn. It is a small world which she loves and lives for, and that world today is lying in shambles all around her. Lonely, overworked, harassed daily by the Army and the police, dishonored, beaten up for not being able to produce the men who have been missing—they came to meet us out in the open regardless of the fear of the police; women after women told us what they have been facing since the army action.
Fifty-year-old Swaran Kaur, wife of the ex-MLA Harbans Singh Ghuman of Ghumankala village has her house raided 45 times by the army, BSF and the police; every time they come they destroy everything, furniture, bartan, beds, they mix up different types of cereals with rice: they have taken away her tractor and driven away her servants. They come anytime, enter her bedroom, pull out sleeping children, clutch her at her throat, make her stand in the sun for hours—a high blood pressure patient notwithstanding—till he faints. Of her four sons, two are in the Jodhpur Jail, one of them the youngest, a student, had gone to the Golden Temple on the 3rdto keep a vow in connection with some college test, the other had gone there to spend a night till the shops reopened and he could buy something (farmers implements, tools) for his farm. The 3rd son was pounced upon and literally lifted up and taken to CIA staff, Batala from the bus stand where, coming from the doctor, who was treating his child for polio, he was waiting with his wife and the sick child. He has undergone inhuman torture, and (how a fake encounter had been arranged and how he was saved from being killed will be found in the Annexure No. 6). Swaran Kaur’s 4th son whom we interviewed has been living away from home because of police harassment; the interview which is in the Annexure No. 3 speaks for itself. This is not telling you about the boys—it is about their suffering mother. Why are the young men—hundreds of them—fine citizens of India not being allowed to live in peace and contribute to the progress of Punjab—is a very relevant question we should all try to answer. They are neither terrorists, nor extremists—but terrible torture inside the jail and the fear of torture if they are caught increasing their indignation which will justify violent action.
Gurdip Kaur who had come out of the police clutches only two days earlier has not met her husband Manohar Singh, a young agriculturist of village Harchowal since October ’84, this is what she told us: “My husband is an Amritdhari, so the police and the Army have troubled him a lot. Terrorised by the police, he might have run away. I do not know where, or he may have been killed by the police or by the Army. I have no information about him. The police are troubling me. For the first time on 26 November 84 the ASI of P. S. Sri Hargovindpur pulled me out of my house and pushed me into his van. They kept slap- ping my face and punched with their fists, they took me to the police station. They abused me in the filthiest language which I felt ashamed to repeat. There was no woman police there and the policemen started interrogating me themselves. I was detained at P.S. Sri Hargovindpur for five days, from November 26 to December 1 , 1984 and then at the Ghuman Police Chowki from 1st December to 6th December. I was let off only after giving Rs. 1800 to SHO Amar Singh’
“Since then, I am taken to the police station and kept there for 10 days every month. In all I have been detained seven times. Only yesterday on May 3, I was kept in the P.S. for 12 hours and dishonored. When I was detained in police custody in November- December 1 984, they destroyed the little crop that we had grown. The Bhayas I had employed were beaten and driven away!”
Gurdip Kaur’s relatives who came to help her were rounded up; her old father, sister-in-law and her husband, her brother and even her brother’s old mother-in-law were all dragged to the than a, and tortured. It was only after they could collect Rs. 3000 and give it to Amar Singh, SHO, of Sri Hargovindpur, they were released.
“Even now the women folk among my relatives are often taken to the police station and Slapped, pushed around and abused. The SHO himself does the interrogation. There are no women police. It is extremely painful for us that policemen themselves should question us. The police lawlessness that prevails here must be brought under check.”
Gurcharam Kaur (40) of village Damodar, Vice President of Istri.
Akali Dal District Committee (Fatehgarh Churian) said, “I have not been able to till my 5 acre farm as I have been harassed by the minions of Santokh Singh Randhawa, till the other day Punjab-Cong- I President. As soon as the land is ploughed and seed sown, these gangsters come and destroy everything. We have complained to the police, and even bribed them but to no avail. During the Army action, I was arrested on the grounds that I had failed in my duty to inform the authorities about the huge catch of sophisticated arms and ammunitions stored inside the complex, because I was a frequent visitor to the Guru Nanak Niwas.”
There was young Satwant Kaur, wife of Ranjit Singh again from Harchowal village, an agriculturist. She said, “My husband and I are both Amritdharis; my husband was arrested and tortured, he must have been killed which may be why I have not seen him since his arrest. I myself was arrested on November 26 by the SHO of Sri Hargovindpur, badly beaten up and abused and kept for five days in the thana and then sent to Ghuman Chowk, where the SHO himself conducted the enquiries. I was released since I was innocent and nothing was found against me. But the SHO takes me to the thana every month and detains me there for five-ten days and I am dis- honoured. Only God knows what they do to me there. My tractor was taken away and kept at the police station from June 84 till December 84; my brothers had to pay Rs. 4000 to Amar Singh, the SHO of Sri Hargovindpur to get my tractor released.
The only request of this poor woman is that “the dishonour to which
I am constantly subjected to must be forthwith stopped and SHO Amar Singh be transferred.”
The list is endless—so is misery and so is fortitude and magnificent pride—excepting once or twice when the memory hurts beyond human endurance—there were no tears! Tears will fall only in the enveloping solitude where none can see. There are the women of Punjab.
Atrocities on children
A 12-year-old boy, Kalu, son of Harbans Singh of Village Agwan (P.S. Dera Baba Nanak) had been taken away at night to the dreaded Interrogation Centre at Amritsar four days earlier. ‘None knew what had happened to him’, his uncle Darshan Singh told us. In Kala Nangal, two boys had become mental wrecks after having been in Military custody.
The story of the children is the story of our shame. So gross and insensitive the political parties have become that not one of the 11 members of Parliament representing 10 political parties visiting Amritsar on August 1, 1984 felt like taking any action, when they were informed that 25 children between 4 and 12 had been detained in the Ludhiana jail under section 107/262 having been rounded up from the Golden Temple in the early July. It was Smt. Kamla Devi Chattopadhyaya—old and very sick—who moved in the matter and discovered the shocking fact that some of the detained children were blind and there were in the jail several women and old men obviously they had been found too dangerous by the Army to be allowed to remain outside. She moved the Supreme: Court with a writ petition and taking “serious note of the state of affairs obtaining in Punjab the Supreme Court ordered the authorities to release “all children kept under detention in various jails and children’s homes in the State of Punjab” immediately. The orders however were not carried out— minors continued to remain in jails and being questioned the jail Superintendent, Patiala, admitted that there were many children still inside his jail also. The story of ghastly torture of young boys as well as of other arrested people has been revealed fully by Justice P.S. Cheema, Vigilance Judge, Sessions Division, Patiala, during his visit to Ladha Kothi (Sangrur Distt) jail. This can be seen in the Annexure No. 1. Since violations of the rule of law is now the rule and the Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act has made the Army supreme, Major Das picked up six children who were taking their examinations in the Jaffarwal village School in September. They were taken to the Military Camp at Tibri and tortured there. He came back to the village again and raided houses of 5 other boys—3 of them were arrested and tortured for 7 days. There was no FIR, no charge sheet, the only proof that the army had taken them and tortured them was the signs of the torture themselves; young Charan Singh who was a fine runner with ambition to represent his school in Punjab’s Running Competition has become lame; he said, “I told them: break my arm but don’t twist my leg; they did not listen.”
