CHAPTER EIGHT
ACCOUNTABILITY OR IMMUNITY ?
During the period 1988-1994 when State repression was at its peak,
the Punjab police enjoyed unbridled powers and remained outside
the orbit of the law. It had become so ruthless that taking a life
had become their favorite sport. They considered themselves to be
the law. The Station House Officer of a police station considered
himself to be a lord and the SSP, the king. They were accountable
to none. Kill anybody, brand him a 'hardcore terrorist', write a
false F.I.R. of an 'encounter', hold a press conference, get your
photograph published in the newspaper and get rewarded with a cash
prize and out of turn promotion, was their favorite modus operandi.
They had no fear of law and had the full backing of the administration.
The institutions of the State viz.. bureaucracy, judiciary and legislature
had maintained sphinx like silence when the police did what it liked.
No institution tried to speak on behalf of the common, innocent
people, who suffered and sacrificed in silence and lived in perpetual
fear of the policemen or the gun totting terrorists. No Judge could
take suo moto notice of what was happening and being reported in
the media. In that hour of uncertainty and fear-psychosis only the
fasted gun was alive. But when for the first time, the Supreme Court
took suo moto notice of a news item in a newspaper in 1993 wherein
horrible tale of the cold blooded killing of Surjit Singh alias
Sarabjeet Singh of Valtoha, by Sub-Inspector Sita Ram was described,
the police force was taken aback. The law of the land began to find
its grip; it girdled and grilled the policemen who began to be arraigned.
It was a shocking reality for them when the Supreme Court marked
a CBI inquiry into the incident where the boy was alive in the hospital
after a so-called encounter and the policemen took him away and
brought him back after few minutes, this time dead, by shooting
him from point blank. The Supreme Court held the police party guilty
of cold-blooded murder and the policemen were brought to trial on
the orders of the Supreme Court. Thereafter, an 'avalanche' of writ
petitions began to be filed in the Supreme Court and High Court
of Punjab & Haryana, alleging 'disappearance' and 'fake encounter'.
Various human rights bodies also got encouraged and started preparing
documentation of cases of police excesses. While the Supreme Court
took cognizance of very few cases of 'fake encounter' and 'disappearance'
where evidence pointed a crime of very heinous nature, like the
one relating to the murder of seven members of a family of Inder
Singh by DSP Baldev Singh Sekhon to settle personal enmity, and
the disappearance of Sarwan Singh of Gurdaspur in 1993. But sadly
enough, the high court refused to hear any petition against Punjab
police and discouraged the people from approaching the court for
redress against police brutality. What to say of denying justice
to poor people, even the Complaint of a Senior IAS lady officer,
Rupan Deol Bajaj against the then Police Chief, K.P.S. Gill on serious
charges of outraging her modesty was dismissed by the High Court
on flimsy ground. The fight for the right continued for eight long
years and ultimately the Supreme Court after eight years set-aside
the High Court order and directed the Chief Judicial Magistrate,
Chandigarh to try the Police Chief for the offences committed by
him. He was ultimately convicted and the sentence was even upheld
by the appeal court. Those days, the judges of the High Court and
lower magistracy were so scared and even convinced of the so-called
achievements of the K.P.S.Gill that they saw a messiah in him and
a traitor in human rights lawyer talking of police brutality. They
always favored the policemen in the judicial battle against the
human rights violations. But soon the circumstances changed and
human rights organisations and lawyers brought the court nearer
to reality and reminded them of their solemn oath to the Constitution
and compelled by the public outcry, the judges started hearing the
petitions describing gory tale of police excesses. Pretty soon,
many cases of police excesses started coming up before the Supreme
Court and Punjab & Haryana High Court. Out of one hundred petitions
filed by the victims of State repression every day, an average of
three to four petitions received fair hearing and CBI or judicial
inquiries were ordered by the High Court. This development baffled
the Punjab police who found itself in the dock for the first time.
In the swirling currents of law and investigation by the CBI, the
policemen began to experience the sense of asphyxia. Serious undercurrents
started brewing at the subordinate level. An atmosphere of panic
and anxiety surrounded the police force and everybody was trying
to save himself from the court's lashing. A committee of Senior
Police authorities was formed to find out ways to tackle the 'litigation
gun' as they call it. Several measures including creation of secret
fund and a special litigation branch in the State administration
with top criminal lawyers being retained for fighting the cases
of cops facing trials, were taken. The tainted police officials
were posted at the place where they could conveniently tamper with
the evidence against them. The concession of bail was made a rule
for them while it was an exception for rest of the countrymen. Even
Policemen accused of murder were granted bail by the High Court
or even the Sessions Court without much reluctance in such matters,
throwing to winds the guidelines laid down by the apex court. The
policemen succeeded in wining over the petitioners or their witnesses
sometimes by intimidation of false implication and sometimes by
offering huge sum of money, out of the secret fund created by the
Punjab police. Lawyers doing many such petitions on pro-bono basis
were faced with embarrassing situation when their clients expressed
willingness to withdraw, inspite of CBI bringing forth unimpeachable
evidence against the police officers in the CBI inquiry. Consequently,
from 1989 to 1992, out of the 240 odd petitions filed against police
excesses more than half of them were withdrawn by the aggrieved
parties. The Courts were also not interested in taking suo moto
notice of the CBI inquiry and allowed the petitions to be withdrawn.
By that time, the tainted officers of Punjab police started taking
the matter of judicial activism seriously and launched a planned
and massive campaign to malign the judiciary and the human rights
activists. During this time, the High Court and the Supreme Court
were flooded with large number of petitions relating to police excesses,
'fake encounter' and 'disappearance'. According to available data
and study conducted by our team, as many as 149 petitions were filed
against the Punjab police in 1993 and 174 in 1994, in the High Court.
This number rose to 773 in 1995 and 1034 in 1996. About 125 petitions
were pending in the Supreme Court and 1156 in the High Court till
1997, and either judicial or CBI inquiry were marked in about 176
petitions. Till May 2000, according to the Litigation and Prosecution
department, more than 3055 writ petitions were filed in the High
Court against the Punjab police in connection with police excesses,
out of which about 2300 petitions were dismissed for various reasons,
like bare denial by the police in kidnapping or arresting the detainee,
lack of information about the police officials who took the detainee
and other legal hassles. Judicial inquiries have been marked in
more than 98 cases. Incidentally, more than twenty five petitions
describing gory details of the police excesses were admitted by
the Supreme Court or High Court where only one officer, namely Ajit
Singh Sandhu, the former district Police Chief of Taran Taran was
involved in committing heinous crimes, by the CBI But the locals
say that the number of the victims of the ruthless police officer
were much more than this. He was even arrested in 1996 in the infamous
murder case of Kuljit Singh Dhatt, Sarpanch of Village Ambala Jattan
in district Hoshiarpur, who was a relative of Shaheed Bhagat Singh,
the famous martyr of India. Dhatt was arrested in July, 1989 on
murder charges by the then Superintendent of Police, S.P.S. Basra
on the orders of S.S.P. Ajit Singh Sandhu, because Dhatt's father-in-law
Dharam Singh, an Superintendent of Police, was resisting police
excesses. This made Ajit Singh Sandhu furious and he targetted Kuljit
Singh Dhatt. Dhatt was shown to have escaped from police custody
on July 25, 1989. But the CBI inquiry indicted both Basra and Ajit
Singh Sandhu for eliminating Dhatt. Sandhu was beaten in Amritsar
jail by other inmates before being released on bail in 1997. Among
the many cases registered against him on court orders, the most
talked about cases related to the elimination of the entire family
of Gurbachan Singh Manochahal, Chief of Bhindranwale Tiger Force
of Khalistan including his old mother, torturing to death seven
members of the family of Baba Charan Singh of Taran Taran, disappearance
of Harjinder Singh Dhillon, an Akali worker of Taran Taran in June,
1992 and kidnapping and "disappearance" of Jaswant Singh
Khalra, a human rights activist in 1995 and case relating to cremation
of thousands of un-identified bodies in Taran Taran cremation grounds,
Patti and Majitha police districts. Not bearing the burden of inhuman
acts done by him, he got frustrated at his repeated indictment in
court cases, and ultimately threw himself before the running Himalayan
Queen Express on May 23, 1997 after leaving a suicide note mentioning,
"it is better to die than to live a life of humiliation"
and became a hero of the devils. Strangely, the person who felt
trigger happy on killing hundreds of people including women and
old men proved to be so coward that he could not bear the desperation
of being in the dock. This surprising act had started a fresh debate
about the means adopted by the Punjab police to wipe out militancy
from the State. Many human rights activists termed it as an act
of cowardice and born out of guilty conscious. But there were still
many who found the 'human rights lobby' responsible for his death.
The fact still, remains that he was perhaps the most disliked person
on the earth. Almost all the newspapers covered the mis-deeds of
the ruthless officer after his death. A team of 'Pioneer' newspaper
after visiting Taran Taran, the home town of Ajit Singh Sandhu,
to see the aftermath of the suicide of Sandhu, found that there
was nobody to praise his acts of omission or commission. The newspaper
wrote:
"The Suicide of Ajit Singh Sandhu has burst open the suppurating
wounds, squeezing the puss into the blood and implanting iron in
their hearts-they are not willing to forgive or forget the atrocities
perpetrated on them by Sandhu and his men, openly deriding the suggestion
of their mentor, KPS Gill, that those who waged the battle for the
country be granted immunity. Bhagwant Singh, an old villager told
that "there are 43 proven cases against Sandhu. Those who hail
him as a good man inspite of these facts ought to be hanged."
Another farmer Subedar Mohan Singh, said, " the police were
no less than terrorists, abducting people to extort money from the
families. Sandhu was the worst; after receiving the ransom he'd
kill them anyway." Some people citied newspaper reports that
when a suspect was taken to Sandhu, he'd smile warily at the subordinates
and declare, "The fish in the river are dying of hunger."
This was the signal for the police to exterminate the person and
dump him into the river."
While many termed his suicide as a "natural fallout of his
own deeds, the beleaguered police officers involved in extra-judicial
killings and other atrocities successfully used his death as an
excuse to seek immunity for their past actions. The atmosphere was
charged with controversy when, K.P.S.Gill, the former Police Chief
and the mentor of Sandhu, bursted in his venomous letter to the
Prime Minister on 31 May, 1997. He wrote:
"...But the best of men who put their lives on the line, having
survived the guns of the terrorists, find themselves targets of
a sustained and vicious campaign of calumny, of institutional hostility
and state indifference. The ultimate irony is that the instruments
and institutions of democracy are, today, arrayed against the very
people who made democracy possible in Punjab.
.....It appears almost as if the State is discriminating between
terrorists and policemen, in favour of the former.
.....At the same time, the doctrine of equality before law is invoked
to incarcerate police officers with the very terrorists they fought
and protected the nation from."
Placing a good case for immunity, in the same breadth, he said,
"Lest any of this be misinterpreted or misrepresented as a
plea for 'immunity', let me state explicitly that I am not asking
for immunity, either for any member of the Punjab police or for
myself." Lambasting at the judiciary, he said, " What
is to be said of judges who failed to consider overwhelming evidence
of the most heinous crimes ? Who failed to administer justice according
to the laws of the land for over a decade in terrorist-related cases
? A constitutional commission should be set up to examine the records
of judicial processes and judgments during the years of terrorism
in Punjab; to identify the judicial officers who failed to discharge
their Constitutional obligations and to honor their oath to dispense
justice without fear or favour; and to take suitable action to ensure
that the judicial and criminal justice system does not collapse
or fail ever again in the fact of lawlessness." He further
said that he was not in favour of amnesty for the police. "Let
the trials of cops go on. Before the verdict of the courts, no cop
should be arrested. All policemen should be given financial and
legal help so that they could plead their cases without any difficulty."
Is this anything short of immunity, Mr. Gill?
Few other policemen like suspended superintendent of Police, S.P.S.
Basra and Jaspal Singh, suspended DSP are under severe depression
due to a large number of cases filed against them in various courts.
Jaspal Singh, earlier boasting of eliminating about 100 terrorists
and accused in the Khalra abduction case, painfully argues that
he did not fight terrorism for personal gains. It was to save Indians
and India." S.P. Vivek Mishra, one of the main accused among
the 28 undertrial policemen in the case of killing four youth in
fake encounter in Kunjar village of Gurdaspur in 1994, laments,
"Facing the legal aftermath of bona-fide anti-terrorism is
more tortuous than facing the terrorists' bullets. This is a terrorism
of a different kind aimed at demoralizing the police through petitions."
Few other supporters of the police force argue, "If today there
is peace and a process of development in the region, much of its
credit goes to the Punjab police. They took great personal risks
to save the lives of the people and the honor of the nation. They
deserve our gratitude and not a sneering treatment."
It may be true that the police had committed some excesses not deliberately,
but as unthinking, instant over-reaction to a dangerous situation
faced by them. But even then, nobody can accept it as a genuine
excuse. State terrorism is no answer to combat terrorism. End cannot
justify the means. State terrorism will only provide legitimacy
to terrorism. That will be bad for the State, the community and
above all, the rule of the law.
But the general public and human rights activists think otherwise.
They outrightly reject as absurd, the argument of KPS Gill that
the police force was justified in taking the law into its hands
because it was a war like situation and everything is fair in war.
It would be a grave folly to hold the human rights activists responsible
for Sandhu's death. Why Mr.Gill is so afraid of human rights activists.
He says that earlier his men were facing gun-totting terrorists
but now they are facing an army of terrorists in human rights activists.
Paying a wild obituary to Sandhu, Navkiran Singh, the daring lawyer
of Chandigarh, who brought many policemen to justice said, "If
you feel sad about Sandhu's death, you should also feel sad about
Hitler's death." In their view, calling people like Ajit Singh
Sandhu as a "crusader of peace" is to give him undue credit.
As for his victims, he was a dreaded mercenary in uniform and corrupt
to the core. It is said that when Sandhu used to go on transfer
from Taran Taran to some other place, he used to take a large number
of detainees alongwith him, whom he had kept in illegal detention.
The outbursts of KPS Gill accusing the judiciary for opening flood
gates of litigation against his men, is being seen as another feeble
attempt to champion the cause of insurgent men in uniform who looted
money, killed innocent people, fulfilled their lust for flesh and
claimed rewards for 'eliminating' terrorists at his behest. Justifying
the initiative of the courts in punishing the policemen, Justice
Ajit Singh Bains, Chairman of Chandigarh based Punjab Human Rights
Organisation says, "When under the pretext of fighting terrorism
the whole families which had nothing to do with crime were simply
abducted and tortured to death for the personal satisfaction of
the individual officers, the courts functioning under our Constitution
can have no option except to punish them in accordance with the
law." Another human rights activist says," Many policemen
behaved like tyrants during the period of militancy. It would be
a folly to call them heroic those who stage-managed encounters to
earn quick promotions and for getting the reward on someone's head.
According to their victims, people like KPS Gill and Sandhu treated
the ordinary citizens as enemies and killed them mindlessly. If
people like him are to be treated like heroes then it is an insult
to the inquiry commissions and the judiciary who have found substantial
allegations against him. It is said that men like Sandhu took orders
from Delhi and many a times those orders were wrong. Why should
a policeman take wrong orders from the wrong persons ? If one wrong
has been done should another be repeated by defending people like
Sandhu and KPS Gill ? Commenting over the easy death of Sandhu,
Late Lt.Col. Partap Singh, Co-Convener of Movement Against State
Repression, Punjab said, " He took the extreme step knowing
fully well that the goddess of retribution had finally caught up
with him. In his suicide note, the late police officer stated: "It
is better to die than to live a life of humiliation." Did he
forget the thousands of innocent people whom he subjected to not
only humiliation but also far worse inhuman treatment? " Lt.Gen.
Harwant Singh in his article "Police and human rights",
aptly described the situation in Punjab during those days. He wrote:
" ...Yet many hold an altogether different view and speak of
Sandhu's acts of commission, corruption and barbaric methods of
torture, kidnapping and ransom, fake encounters, elimination and
custodial deaths etc. which would put to shame any civilized society.
It is alleged that of the 43 odd criminal cases against him, many
had little to do with terrorism.
......To contend that the administration and the judiciary in Punjab
had retreated into hiding and should now be taken to task for their
cowardice, is to beg the question. The administration and the judiciary
can deliver only when the police and security forces are able to
restore order and the rule of law. The fact that there was a period
when there was no law and order in parts of Punjab is indicative
of the failure of the police and security forces in the first place."
In response to the death of Sandhu, a doctor of Amritsar, R.S.Pannu,
wrote in the columns of Editor's mail in Tribune in June, 1997:
"The death of Sandhu is a sad affair. But the excesses he committed
during his tenure as SSP, Taran Taran on innocent public in the
name of fighting terrorism is a painful story. In 1986, when I was
the SMO of Civil Hospital, Taran Taran, I was also subjected to
lot of harassment and complications for not issuing false post mortem
reports to the stage-managed encounters. I was even implicated in
false cases of robbery by Sandhu. It was only with God's grace and
the Courts' protection that I was saved from his clutches."
One thing which we all must bear in mind is that security personnel
like Sandhu, who transgressed the limits of law while fighting terrorism
in Punjab should be prosecuted as there is no provision under the
Constitution to grant amnesty to officers guilty of unlawful conduct,
whether in the name of nation's security and integrity. The officers
who had been decorated and rewarded with double promotions for 'eliminating'
terrorists should also be made accountable for their acts of lawlessness.
Can anybody tell us, who gave these policemen the authority to bump
off anybody they like and claim a reward for killing a hardcore
terrorist? While gallantly coming to the defence of his men facing
prosecution with many points to prevent their undue prosecution
and harassment, Mr. KPS Gill appears to have no mind to understand
the basic question, whether the Indian Constitution and law permitted
the police to act unlawfully in any situation, even under the circumstances,
he claimed to be in ? As a matter of fact, Sandhu's final act should
awaken the Indian Police to perils of expediency and illegitimacy
in the performance of its duty. It should also drive home the message
that nobody would do anything substantial to help them in facing
the inevitable nemesis with dignity and fortitude, inspite of the
acts being done for the security and integrity of the nation. The
pointing finger raised by the guilty policemen at the role of judiciary
is highly condemnable. They demand an inquiry into the role of judiciary.
But why judiciary alone? A thorough probe into the entire gamut
of anti-terrorist operations in Punjab is urgently needed. It is
a matter of record that most of the suspects booked under TADA got
acquittals. It may be because the judiciary was afraid of the terrorists
or the police investigations were shoddy. If you will probe one
aspect, you will have to see the other aspect also. Is the Punjab
police or for that matter, KPS Gill willing to accept such inquiry.
Moreover, how can an indictment of the judiciary condone the extra-constitutional
actions of the police? It has also to be understood that the existing
laws and legal system amply empower the police force, to effectively
discharge its duty of defending the society in abnormal situations.
Even if it is not so, by no means, the police could and should take
over the combined powers of all sectors of criminal justice system
and resort to extra-legal methods to handle situations. Further
more, immunity to policemen who committed excesses hits at the roots
of our democratic system. Moreover, it must be remembered that these
policemen are not facing trial for eliminating militants but for
killing innocent persons, or using law enforcement machinery to
settle personal scores. Here is one example: Among the prominent
police officers seeking immunity and who went on hunger strike in
Amritsar jail following Sandhu's death is DSP Baldev Singh Sekhon,
convicted for kidnapping seven members of a family, including a
child and an old woman, moving them to different stations following
his transfer and killing them later. Should people like this DSP
get immunity or should he face the due process of law ? Giving blanket
immunity, as demanded, would surely bring serious repercussions.
It would tantamount to creating rogue fighters. It would be a blot
on the nation's pride. Even most of the guilty police officers admit
that " Yes, we often killed terrorists after arresting them,
because we had no choice. The judiciary had collapsed and the judges
would either grant bail or just go away on leave." To say this
is not to deny that state sponsored terrorism was prevailing in
its ugliest form during those days and the human rights became the
first casualty in such a situation. Sandhu's suicide may be tragic
to few, but to condone blatant acts of highhandedness could spur
fresh alienation among the people, which nobody is willing to afford.
We, for one, don't need selective tampering with the law. We need
to see that proper systems are in place. No civilized order can
turn a blind eye to the human rights of innocent citizens who get
caught in one or the other kind of terrorism. The argument of the
police that immunity should be granted to those officers who acted
in bonafide discharge of their duty in the state's fight against
militancy has to be rejected at the threshold. How can even the
bonafide mistakes in the discharge of duty be condoned when there
is no way out in the law. Anyway, how does one know whether the
actions were bonafide or not? Only judicial probe can reveal that.
There is a clear effort to stall these by raising the bogey of demoralization.
Can anybody condone the excesses of the nature committed by Punjab
police? Even if it was a war like situation in the state, can every
act of the force deserved to be condoned even during war, because
even in that situation, international conventions governed human
rights?
Lest it be misunderstood that we are ignoring the dastardly acts
of terrorism committed by militants, we wish to bring the record
straight. If the acts of violence committed by militants are condemnable,
the acts of people like Ajit Singh Sandhu were more condemnable,
because it were committed by the men who were supposed to forbid
it. Another important aspect of the matter is that if the police
force is checked with strong hand, the realization that they are
accountable for their deeds as much as any other human being would
hopefully make them think twice before doing what has virtually
become a habit with them.
It would be a great folly to deny that several persons were eliminated
by the Police in Punjab, by means not necessarily legal. Many of
them were not killed in encounters, they were simply tortured cruelly
for eliciting information about the militants. The police adopted
the most hated practice of meeting violence with counter-violence.
The State and the police acted in unison in this case. It also cannot
be denied that in such a situation, several police officers enriched
themselves. In one respect they were following the example of the
militants themselves. Many police officers had resorted to unabashed
loot and there were also many instances of innocent people being
harassed and forced to sell their lands and property for paying
police officers to ensure their freedom. People were harassed or
held up in false cases for extorting money. Do such police officers
deserve amnesty? Such persons should certainly be tracked down and
brought to book. There is no question of taking a sympathetic view
in such cases on the plea that the accused police officers had done
great service in curbing militancy. What is imperative and very
important is that till a judicial commission is appointed to look
into every aspect of the Punjab problem, no body should talk of
granting immunity to the police officers facing from the wrongful
actions done by them in the name of national integration and a war
like situation.
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