SANGRUR India: On a country road lined with bougainvillea in flaming bloom Sukhwinder Singh Bhatt i’s abductors perspiring in the heat of a Punjab summer Iaid their trap
It was 4:30 p.m. when the bus carrying their quarry home from work moved into view two men in civilian clothes clutching light machine guns motioned it to stop and made five men get off
Identifying the portly bushy bearded Sikh attorney among them the gunmen roared away with their prey in a white van whose driver wore a mask.
That was May 12. Bhatti 43 hasn’t been heard from since. His WIFE sick with worry that her face has turned a cadaverous gray and her eyes have sunk into their orbits. In all likelihood the Sangrur District Bar Assn. member has been murdered Fellow attorneys say the same fate befell three other defense lawyers before him and one even vanished with his wife and 18-month-old son.
More examples of terronsm in violence-weary Punjab It depends how one defines the term. As in other recent incidents the prime Suspects are not armed insurgents battling the Indian government but the police. There is no rule of law in Punjab Bhatt’s wife wringing thin hands whose nails have been gnawed to the flesh exclaimed as she wept. We can count only on Cod. Two years after the balance shifted decisively in the authorities favor in the war on Sikh separatism the Punjab populace is reaping brutal and bloody harvests. Police had bet n given a virtually free hand to liquidate the militants now like a machine that has escaped from its inventors they continue to couture acts illegal extortion. Elected officials and the courts seem powerless to stop them.
They have created a monster and now they are finding it difficult to control a local journalist says.
For more than a decade a rebellion launched by often vicious extremists from the Sikh religious and ethnic minonty raged in this flat canal-laced land of rice wheat and sunflower fields on Indias northwest border As recently as 1991 the shingle for a separate Sikh state was claiming nearly 5000 lives a year.
To liquidate the separatist danger India bread basket the government embarked on a ruthless campaign police began to kill any mililants they caught suspect over to court cowed by the extremists.
Now the black period is aver Punjab’s chief minister Beant Singh said earlier this year proclaiming victory over the rebels
The one sense he is undeniably fight In industrialized Ludhiana the Indian states targets city alcohol fabricated engagement partice and jeans for girls are back in you ‘ve as people ignore the fundamentalists ascetic Mats of the past.
After sundown traffic again roars along toads and farmers drive (cams of oxen through fields they once fed at dusk. In 1992 when militants ordered an election boycott only 20% of voters turned out In partial elections in May three times that percentage voted By Singhs estimate only 12 to 13 hard-core militants remain at large and most of them have fled Punjab. But police conduct continues to vary from the grisly to the Outrageous according to press accounts and interviews with dozens of victims and witnesses.
Last December four villages Women Who went to Amritsar seat Of the holiest Sikh shrine were illegally taken into custody and the word jebkatri—pickpocket— was tattooed on their foreheads. The women were obviously Simple country folk who had nothing to do with cither politics or crime their lawyer says Police so clearly exceeded the bounds of permissible behavior that the Punjab High Count ordered: the women award 50000 rupees ($1620) in compensation and New Delhi authorities launched a criminal investigation.
It was an all-too-rare instance of errant police officers here being held accountable for their deeds.
In Punjab there is rule of law on the statute books only Lawyer D.S. Gill chairman of the Ludhiana: based International Human Rights Organization a nongovernmental monitoring group charges Police have instructions to climinated people who were directly or indirectly involved in the (separatist) movement; militants relatives and sympathizers religious figure
Also at risk he says are people who try to monitor human rights abuses and attorneys who represent licensed militants
Even being married to the wrong person may be dangerous. In June 1993 police dragged 40-year-old Gumam Kaur by the hair from her Ludhiana home clubbing her with rifle butts.
It later became clear that they were really seeking her husband who is accused of being the brains behind the militant Babbar Khalsa International group.
The husband was arrested later in Delhi police announced. But his wife never resurfaced although the Indian Supreme Courts registrar ordered Punjab police to hold an inquiry and report immediately. Her sister-in-law fears that Kaur was tortured to death by police in the town of Tarn Taran and her body dumped in the Beas River.
The case of Bhatti a member of a separatist political pany who Served as legal counsel to Sikhs accused of terrorism depicts in miniature how Punjab’s police Seem to be able to act at will. He was abducted 100 yards from a police check point west of Sangrur one reason many people believe police were responsible another is the criminal complaint that Bhatti had filed on behalf of an old man tortured in police custody
The plaintiff Baldev Singh is 74 In July 1993 he says he was picked up by police stripped naked trussed up with a rope and hung upside down from the ceiling of a police station. He was beaten with bamboo poles on the Soles of his feet until he blacked out.
Next Singh says police crushed his thighs beneath a heavy wooden roller they asked him if he had been providing shelter to Sikh militants. No he maintained. Again he lost consciousness
The torture was repeated for a second day on the third day he was freed He had to be driven home because he couldn’t walk. On orders from the Sangrur magistrate three doctors examined Singh and corroborated that he hid been tortured. Bhatti filed a legal complaint on his behalf.
Police officials were threatening Mr. Bhatti and me to withdraw the case Singh now says they said we’d be eliminated.
Outraged by the mysterious disappearance of yet another lawyer Punjab High Court Judge V. K. Bali gave police until June 3 to produce Bhatti. But police showed up in court empty-handed saying they had searched extensively and had no idea where he was
Indian officialdom routinely rejects allegations of human rights violations in Punjab and other troubled areas of the country. The charismatic chief of the Punjab police K. P S Gill who is universally credited with crushing the insurgency has categorically denied accusations of police brutality and killings.
During his visit to Washington in May Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao assured a joint Session of Congress that his government was taking scrupulous Care to protect human rights and he invited members of the Senate to go see the situation in Punjab for them.
Crisscrossing the dusty sunbaked farmlands watered by tributes of the Indus one hears stories that are at odds with the reassuring statements of officials Such testimony portrays police and paramilitary forces subject to no real Judicial or governmental oversight. It seems to make a farce of the Slogan painted on red-and-blue lice checkpoints that proving populace proavian with affection. I‘ve come across no case where A prosecution against the guilty official was won R.S Maha a Sangrur lawyer says. And the victim remains the victim. In a study of alleged shootouts between militants and police in Punjab the international human Rights organization Amnesty in emotional noted that in 169 suet encounters reported in the states press 266 purported Sikh separatists were killed but not a single police officer.
Ina report released during Raos U.S. visit Human Rights Watch/ Asia and Physic tins for Human Rights put the death toll in Punjab’s decade-long insurgency it more than 10000 charging that most of the victims were humanly executed in police custody.
The case of Harpal Singh 40 seems all too typical. Acquitted on terrorism charges last July the agricultural worker was arrested the next day. Police however denied detaining him. A few later they announced that armed with an AK-#7 had been slain in an encounter near the village of Maheru.
The doctor who performed the autopsy confined to Singhs father that the dead man was his son. But it was a strange gunfight. The postmortem showed he had been shot point—blank in the forehead twice with a pistol. Supposedly armed with a fast-firing assault rifle he hurt no one.
Nobody has ever been killed in a fake ambush Punjab Chief Minister Singh has asserted As for accusations of official brutality he claims that during his more than two years in office about 200 police officers have been punished for one offense or another
However a recent occurrence in Chandigarh Punjab’s capital casts doubt on the official version of events In March police chief Gill Summoned the press to witness the surrender of a celebrated ideologue of the separatist movement Kanwar Singh Dhami
The news conference impliedly deviated from its organizers plans when the badly limping speaker announced that he had been held legally and incommunicado by police for months along with his pregnant wife and 6-year-old son. Dhami told reporters that he had been severely tortured and warned while in custody that his family would be wiped out if he did nt surrender to Gill before the press.
After the uncooperative speaker was bundled off by police Gill said he was obviously deranged.
A particularly gruesome encounter slaying in the town of Patti also has bared official misdeeds Police in October left a body at the Civil Hospital asking that an autopsy be performed. Sarabjit Singhs head was bathed in blood witnesses remember; he had been shot in the hack of the skull with a small-caliber gun.
When the corpse began to talk the hospital staff was flabbergasted. Singh it timed out wasn’t dead but was severely wounded.
The entry hole left by the bullet was dressed and he was given injections and intravenous glucose Then Sita Ram a police officer returned. He grabbed Singh by the arms and legs and tossed him into a patrol vehicle witnesses said.
An hour later the police back. Again they want marten performed. This time Singh was truly dead
The case appears to be one of the very few in Punjab where a police officer may be punished for the use of excessive force leading some to hope that officials of the government and courts are trying harder to rein in police. Ram is in jail pending trial Barat the hospital the doctor who treated Singh afraid to discuss the case for fear that Rams fellow officers may take revenge securing a murder conviction may be impossible.
Under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act a terrorism suspect in India can he held for up to two years without trial
Ludhiana human rights activist and lawyer Gill estimates that some Sikhs have been in jail for up to four years without trial
Ludhiana human rights activist and lawyer Gill estimates that some Sikhs have been in jail for up to four years without having been convicted of any crime or even having gone to court
His organization which has undisguised sympathy for the separatist struggle has estimated that 7000 to 8000 activists relatives and sympathizers are languishing in Indian jails often in custody illegally When quizzed earlier this year Chief Minister Singh maintained that only 800 10 900 terrorists Were in jail
Events in Punjab have much wider implications because police techniques pioneered there are being extended to other troubled areas of India including the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
It was announced in May for instance that the new post of superintendent of police for operation’s would be created in districts of Kashmir where Muslim rights activists the holder of this job is in charge of faking the deaths of detainees in encounters.
Police chief Gill has also admitted that police hit teams have been related in Punjab to trace identify and kill top militants instead of arresting them In May 1993 one squad went all the way to Calcutta to shoot dead an alleged militant and his wife.
Two weeks ago nine police assassin went to West Bengal to kill another alleged terrorist. Local Authorities were so infuriated that they disarmed the Punjab officers and barred them from leaving until an investigation is complete
Punjab police showed their colors again this month at a New Delhi press conference called after their chief was chosen head of Indias field hockey federation When a pair of journalists cast doubt on Gills qualifications for the job they were hustled out by five high-ranking Punjab officers and given a thrashing.
Indian authorities biggest break in their fight against armed Sikh militancy came in February 1993 when Gurbachan Singh Manochahal chief of the under round committee that had been spearheading the Sikh separatist struggle was gunned down emerging from a bunker hides beneath a cowshed. In a poor farming vises Tam Taran the dead struggling to by we have no peace Ki Kaur complains. Police seized sprawling farmhouse occupied the family she says
How many members of her family are still alive? Kaur pauses think. Gurbachan mother i father disappeared following r detention by police she says. A same thing happened to two of his four brothers in all she concludes to family members have vanished or been killed while in the custody of Punjab police. The peace they talk about been built on the bones of my relatives. Kaur says courtesy; LA Times
Article extracted from this publication >> July 22, 1994
