Sikh Human Rights Abuses

Enforced Disappearances, Arbitrary Executions and Cremations:
Victim Testimony and India's Human Rights Obligations
Interim Report

Section 3
THE ISSUES AND THEIR HISTORY

The following Incident-Report tries to bring out the politico-legal aspects of the Punjab tragedy, as well its human dimensions. We hope that the reader will share the sense of outrage which impelled us to document the gruesome events of the last decade and a half - enforced disappearances, arbitrary executions and secret disposal of dead bodies, all carried out by the State agencies. The Incident-Report also captures the urgency for accountability and reparation, which the situation calls for.

A PARADIGMATIC CASE:
Fifty-five years old Sardar Ajaib Singh from village Othiyan in Ajnala subdivision of Amritsar district was a man of worldly wisdom, who handled the problems of life in a calm and calculated manner. These qualities of his character had stood him in good stead, enabling him to preserve his family, property and considerable social standing in an area of Punjab that for a decade had remained locked in the spiral of Sikh insurgency and the State repression. Ajaib Singh was the elected head of his village council (Panchayat).
He had three grown up sons: Thirty-five years old Kulwinder Singh, married with three young children, was employed as the Panchayat Secretary at Naushera Pannua block of Tarn Taran subdivision in Amritsar district. It was a challenging job that involved attending to local problems concerning land, revenue and development. Kulwinder was very popular for the fairness and energy with which he performed his duties.
Second son Jagbir Singh, thirty-two, managed the family's twenty-five acres of irrigated agricultural land, which yielded good crops and income. His third son Maminder Singh, twenty-eight, became a registered medical practitioner. Ajaib Singh and his wife Manjit Kaur kept good health. As devout Sikhs, they often went on pilgrimages, and organized and attended with fervor the festivals of the religious calendar.
Ajaib Singh made some extra money as a property dealer and spent his spare time dabbling in the Congress politics, which brought him many influential friends also in the official and police circles. Things seemed to be going as well as they could under the circumstances.
As we said, Ajaib Singh had for long been associated with the Congress Party, and he had not given up the association even after the army assaulted the Golden Temple in June 1984. He was all praise for Rajiv Gandhi when, after winning the parliamentary elections with an unprecedented popular mandate early in the year, he signed an Accord with the Akali Dal's moderate President Longowal in July 1985. The Accord paved the way to the restoration of a popular government in the State. Although Longowal was assassinated soon after, his equally moderate successor, Surjit Singh Barnala led the party to a thumping victory in the State Assembly elections, and went on to form a government.
For a while, the situation seemed to be improving. But the central government was unable to keep the promises it had made in the Longowal Accord. The radical Sikh groups that had been lying low resurfaced. Militancy revived. The slogan of Khalistan was again in the air. In October 87, the Union government brought Punjab under President Rule after dismissing the Akali government. Paramilitary forces were deployed to crack down on extremists.
When he saw that the situation in his part of Punjab was becoming very tense, Kulwinder shifted his residence to Amritsar mainly for the reason that his young children needed education. Ajaib Singh gave him money to build a small house in Amritsar. Kulwinder daily commuted to his work on his motorcycle.
20 December 1991 was a crisp winter day. Kulwinder left for his work little late that morning. On the way, one man asked him for a lift on his motorcycle, a TVS Suzuki No. PB02-C-4455. The man later identified as Palwinder Singh Sona was a known militant.
It is possible that Sona forced Kulwinder to take him along on the pillion of his motorcycle, as his brother Jagbir Singh suggested to me. Subsequent events, however, indicate that the two may have been actually acquainted. That would hardly be inconceivable in the situation then obtaining in Punjab.
Thousands of young Sikhs had embraced the path of gun to confront the Indian State. Many empathized with their sentiments and helped them indirectly to find shelter and food even when disagreeing with the wisdom of their chosen path. Kulwinder's job brought him in contact with all kinds of characters, some of them very weird, who were involved in land and revenue disputes. If we assume that Kulwinder had known Palwinder Sona to be a militant, we must also see that he could not have refused the hitchhiker from the fear of reprisal.
The motorcycle was stopped for a routine check at a barrier set up by Sadar police station of Amritsar on the road across the railway station. Inspector Ajaib Singh, Station House Officer (SHO) of Sadar Police Station, was personally leading the check-over. One police constable at the barrier recognized Sona as a wanted militant and both of them were taken into custody.
By coincidence, the arrest was witnessed by Manjit Singh, head of the village council of Raja Sansi, an influential man with many contacts in the police. He was looking for a taxi near the barrier when the police nabbed the two. Manjit Singh was a friend of Kulwinder's father who also knew Inspector Ajaib Singh. Recognizing Kulwinder, he went up to the Inspector and pleaded for his release. But the Inspector did not agree.
Later, Manjit Singh went to Kulwinder's house and informed his wife Rajbir Kaur who immediately sent a message to her father-in-law in his village Othiyan. Ajaib Singh accompanied by his second son Jagbir Singh rushed to Amritsar and met Inspector Ajaib Singh at Sadar police station, who said that Kulwinder would not be released before a thorough interrogation.
The same night, Sona was killed in a supposed armed combat between the police and a group of militants. Punjab newspapers reported the killing on 21 December. The Tribune said Palwinder Singh Sona was a top militant who carried the designation of a Lieutenant General. The report also said that his three accomplices had escaped and that the police had also killed three other unidentified militants in armed encounters in the outskirts of the city.
The report made Ajaib Singh and his family very nervous. The police could easily kill Kulwinder in their custody and report it as a death of an unidentified militant in a combat. But on 21 December, Inspector Ajaib Singh and a large police force brought Kulwinder to his house No. 24 in Sahebzada Zujjar Singh Avenue on Ajnala road in Amritsar. The entire family was present when the police led him to search the house. The search did not yield anything incriminating. But Kulwinder was not allowed to converse with his family members and was taken away after the search.
Ajaib Singh decided to negotiate Kulwinder's release for money, without wasting any time. He involved some middlemen, including Manjit Singh of Raja Sansi village who knew the Inspector well.
Inspector Ajaib Singh demanded one hundred and fifty thousand rupees. Borrowing the amount from his relatives, Ajaib Singh sent it across to the Inspector through the broker who had negotiated the deal. By then, the Inspector had changed his mind. The case was no longer in his hands, he explained. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Chattopadhyay had taken over the investigation.
Ajaib Singh now went to Raghunandan Lal Bhatia, a senior Congress leader and former Minister in the Union government, for help. Bhatia talked to the SSP two three times on telephone. The SSP said Kulwinder had to be interrogated. The SSP was not particularly courteous to the former Minister refused to talk to him again. Ajaib Singh then requested Surinder Singh Kairon, son of former Chief Minister Pratap Singh Kairon and another influential Congress leader in the State, to intervene. Kairon talked to the SSP who again was less than responsive.
Ajaib Singh asked the Sadar police station to formally register his complaint that Kulwinder had been illegally arrested. His friend, Deputy Superintendent of Police Davinder Singh called the Station House Officer to recommend the registration. But Sadar police station refused to do so.
Punjab was under the Governor's rule. So, Ajaib Singh sent urgent telegrams to the Governor, the Director General of Police (DGP), the Chief Secretary and the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court, informing them about the illegal arrest and beseeching them to intervene. Later, he also sent detailed written petitions about the arrest and the disappearance. But there was no response.
Kulwinder had been very friendly with Birendra Singh Kalon, then Additional District Commissioner of Tarn Taran. Approached by Ajaib Singh for help, Kalon found out that Kulwinder was under interrogation and was being forced to identify wanted Sikh radicals in the area. This was confirmed when a month after his arrest, the police took him to the village of Jagrup Singh Dhotiyan, also a known militant. Jagrup was arrested in the combing operation that followed, but one of his associates, also on the wanted list, escaped. As punishment, Kulwinder was badly tortured. Later, he was again seen by his former colleagues at Naushera Pannua. Kulwinder was unable to walk and his body showed signs of terrible torture.
Ajaib Singh pursued the case of his son relentlessly, although to no avail.
In early 1992, Punjab came under the Congress government with Beant Singh as the Chief Minister. Ajaib Singh again requested Raghunandan Lal Bhatia and Surinder Kairon, who had become a Member of Parliament, to help. But no one could ascertain Kulwinder's whereabouts.
Ajaib Singh wanted to know whether he was still being held for anti-insurgency operations, intensified under Beant Singh's regime, or had already been killed. Ajaib Singh met another Congress Member of Parliament Jagmit Singh Brar, who sometimes talked about the issues of justice to Punjab. Brar wrote to Union Home Minister Chahvan and, later in March 1993, personally met him to pursue the case. Ajaib Singh was also in Delhi to goad Brar into action. The Union Home Minister talked to Punjab's Director General of Police K. P. S. Gill who confirmed that Kulwinder Singh had been killed.
But there was no formal acknowledgement. The family never received the dead body, nor the mortal remains from the cremation, if it had taken place. The Sadar police station in Amritsar did not even bother to hide or destroy his Suzuki motorcycle No. PB02-C-4455, confiscated at the time of his illegal arrest. The motorcycle was openly used by its officers.
In 1996, Ajaib Singh engaged lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal in Chandigarh to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus - No. 324/1996 - before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The petition was backed with the supportive affidavits of Manjit Singh, who had witnessed the arrest, and other eyewitnesses. The court issued notice. SHO Ajaib Singh, who had taken Kulwinder into custody on 20 December 91 became nervous about the possibility of his incrimination if the High Court ordered an inquiry.
The officer began to liaison with the family members for a settlement, offering to pay a substantial amount of money if they agreed to withdraw the petition. Ajaib Singh spurned the overtures with contempt. On 12 August 96, Sub-Inspector Gujinder Singh from the CIA staff office in Amritsar picked up Ajaib Singh and his two sons from their house and brought them to the B. R. Model School Interrogation Center. They were held in illegal detention for a day and threatened with elimination if they did not withdraw the petition from the High Court. They were released after Manjit Kaur sent telegrams to the higher authorities complaining about the illegal detention. Ajaib Singh also sent a letter about the illegal detention and the threat given to him at the CIA interrogation center to the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. But no action followed.
Meanwhile, his second son Jagbir Singh had been employed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), as a dispatch clerk, on the recommendation of then President Gurcharan Singh Tohra. Jagbir worked in the head quarters housed within the Golden Temple Complex. Raghubir Singh was the temple's manager, an influential person within the SGPC who was also acquainted with Inspector Ajaib Singh. In March or April 1997, while the inquiry ordered by the High Court was still pending, Raghubir Singh called Jagbir into his office to make a proposal on the Inspector's behalf. He would pay one million rupees if his father agreed to withdraw the petition. Raghuvir Singh also threatened to transfer Jagbir to Jind, a small place in Haryana, if he failed in persuading his father to negotiate with the Inspector. Jagbir agreed to try. In the evening, he could not muster the courage to take up the proposal with his father. Next morning, he opened the topic by mentioning that Raghuvir Singh was harassing him. Ajaib Singh asked him to explain and remained silent for a while after Jagbir completed the narration of his conference with Raghuvir Singh. Ajaib Singh then asked if he wished to accept the proposal. Jagbir said no. Ajaib Singh repeated the question again and again, with Jagbir affirming no compromise. Raghubir Singh had proposed to pay one million rupees on the Inspector's behalf. Ajaib Singh was suddenly seething with anger: He would pay one million and a half to recover his son. If it was not feasible, the Inspector should never contact him again. That was his message to Raghubir Singh. He was confident that the High Court would do him justice.
In the beginning, the matter seemed to be moving in the right direction. At the time of crucial hearing, lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal went away to America and Canada on invitation from the Sikh expatriate community to lecture on the human rights situation in Punjab. His junior was unable to attend the court proceedings. The judge had also changed. The petition was dismissed by the new judge S. P. Malte in October 96, on the ground of insufficient evidence to prove that his son had been abducted by the police. Returning from his foreign tour, Lakhanpal promised to take the matter to the Supreme Court which, in the meantime, had taken cognizance of illegal mass cremations of supposedly unidentified bodies conducted by the Punjab police. The Supreme Court referred the matter to the National Human Rights Commission for determination and of all the issues, after the Central Bureau of Investigation corroborated the allegations in its report submitted in December 1996. Ajaib Singh expected his case to come up before the Supreme Court, as Lakhanpal had promised. But nothing happened. For the next month or two, Ajaib Singh remained very distressed. Gurcharan Singh Tohra advised him to engage a Supreme Court lawyer in Delhi to file a fresh petition. Lawyer R. S. Sodhi demanded twenty-five thousand rupees, which he immediately paid up. For some time thereafter, Ajaib Singh remained eager with the impression that the hearing before the Supreme Court would soon commence. When it turned out that the court had not admitted the petition, he was crestfallen.
Soon, he started making fresh rounds of Chandigarh where he met the newly elected Akali Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal. Before the elections, the Akali Dal had promised justice to all victims of human rights violations that had taken place over the last decade. Badal proposed to mark an inquiry about his case to the Police Inspector General of the Border Range. Ajaib Singh said that his son had been murdered by policemen who would not, therefore, allow the truth to come out. Badal then marked the inquiry to the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar. This was in May 1997. The Deputy Commissioner recorded the statements of several witnesses, and closed the inquiry on 26 June.
It is not clear what happened thereafter, but on 4 July 97 Ajaib Singh returned home in a dejected state of mind. Apparently, he had found out that the inquiry report was not going to say anything conclusive. For the next couple of days, he did not talk to anyone and remained unusually calm. His wife Manjit Kaur tried to engage him in conversation, and to draw him out of his depression. She suggested that they sell a piece of their agricultural land to raise the resources to pursue their son's case in other ways. But Ajaib Singh remained silent.
On 7 July 97 morning, Ajaib Singh left the house after announcing that he was going to the Golden Temple, Darbar Sahib. Although the family members had been very troubled about his unusual silence, they did not see anything aberrant in his visiting the shrine. It was routine.
After doing the round of the temple's circumference and offering obeisance at the main sanctuary, Ajaib Singh sat down on the platform under the northern gate. One relative, who was also visiting the temple, saw him there scribbling something in his diary. The relative assumed that he was calculating or writing something concerning his business as a property dealer. Mota Singh, correspondent of Az Di Awaz, a daily newspaper published from Jalandhar, also saw him likewise engaged in writing something.
Ajaib Singh was composing his suicide note. Probably, he had already consumed poison, which he had somehow procured and taken along with him to the Golden Temple. After finishing the letter, Ajaib Singh walked into the premise of the Bank of Punjab, within the temple complex, whose manager Avtar Singh was his neighbor in Sahibzada Zujjar Singh Avenue. Ajaib Singh, who must already have been feeling the poison's effect, told him that he had swallowed powerful toxins and would not live long.
Avtar Singh probably could not grasp the seriousness of his situation and sent him home in his car. Ajaib Singh was vomiting and told his son Jagbir that he had taken poison with the intention to die because he could not bear the injustice any longer. Immediately, the family members rushed him to a hospital where the doctors, after examining him, said that he must be taken to the main Civil Hospital. Ajaib Singh was already dead when doctors at the civil hospital looked him up.
Lot of his sympathizers gathered for the cremation. Some police officials too approached Jagbir Singh to suggest that he should mention heart attack as the cause of his father's death. Otherwise, there will be consequences, they warned. But Jagbir Singh stated the truth and released his suicide note to the press. The national press blacked out the story. The following is my short translation of the suicide note. It is dated Monday, 7 July 1997 and it says:
"In this house of Guru Ram Das, I seek forgiveness from everyone whom I may have unwittingly hurt or wronged in anyway. Self-annihilation is the only way out of a tyranny that leaves no chance for justice. Tyrants like former SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu, who eliminated thousands of innocent Sikhs and also extorted millions of rupees, also sometimes commit suicide under the unbearable weight of their sins. It is known that Jaswant Singh Khalra had become Sandhu's victim for his human rights work.
My son Kulwinder Singh was picked up by SHO Ajaib Singh of Sadar police station in Amritsar. Neither had he committed a crime nor was he absconding from the police custody. Why did the SHO kill him then? I understand that the time and the place of one's death are predetermined. SHO Ajaib Singh got promoted to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police for eliminating hundreds of young Sikhs. As an officer, he extorted millions of rupees from the people whom he held at his mercy.
My grudge is that no one even confirmed my son's death. I did not even receive his ashes. Otherwise, I would not have gone to the High Court for justice, which I never received. I approached Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal. Some people rightly say that he is not a fit person to rule Punjab. I had approached him for justice. He marked the case to the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar for inquiry. Badal should find out if he had conducted a fair inquiry. I believe DSP Ajaib Singh gave him a handsome amount of money to muddle it up.
I pray to Guru Ram Das to send me where my son is. I hope my prayers would be answered. Once again I apologize to the residents of my colony, my village Othian and Gumtala for any inconvenience I may have caused them. I am not in anyone's financial debt. Nevertheless, I authorize DSP Davinder Singh to sell my land to settle any claim of liability that may arise. I am grateful for the support I have received from Manjit Singh, Sarpanch of Raja Sansi, DSP Davinder Singh and Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra. I wish to be cremated near the Martyr's Shrine, Gurudwara Shahindan. I do not wish any rituals, except the recitation of the Guru Granth, to follow my death. If my family wants to offer any service, it should be made to the charitable organization of Pingalwara.
Now the ink in my pen and also my time in this world are running to their end.
Wahe Guruji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh!

THE ORDEAL OF SURVIVAL:
Jagbir Singh, with whom I talked at length for the first time in September 97 to understand the train of events that crushed his father's life, is still working for the SGPC. I was struck by the extraordinary melancholy and his obsession with his father's tragic destiny, which seemed to be eating into his very soul. Jagbir would be there whenever I went to Amritsar, with his bundle of papers about the lost court cases, newspaper clippings and photographs of his father and disappeared brother. He would also present himself at every press conference or public meeting organized by any human rights organization anywhere in Punjab. Alas, he would not be the only one around with a tale of tragedy and impossible redress. After his father's suicide, Maminderpal Singh could not carry on with his medical practice in his village, as his mother wanted to live in Amritsar to look after her widowed daughter-in-law and grand-children. Maminderpal is now also employed by the SGPC and lives in Amritsar. Kulwinder Singh's thirty-six years old widow Rajbir Kaur smothers her own grief in bringing up her two daughters Amrita Preetam Kaur and Amanjot Kaur, twelve and ten, and a seven years old son Ranjodh Singh who, although conscious of an all-permeating sense of calamity, do not yet know what exactly happened to their father.
Kulwinder Singh's enforced disappearance, life-exhausting and fruitless pursuit of accountability and justice by his family, suicide by his psychologically broken father, the trauma and the ruin of the surviving members - none of these are unique to this particular Incident-Report. Punjab's countryside is dotted with myriad other examples of people who became victims of India's war against the Sikh separatist threat. But, unlike Kulwinder, most victims are to be found among the poor, the uneducated and the powerless, who cannot afford the mechanical, grinding legal process, whom the elite across the lines of political divide does not mind seeing destroyed.

ABORTION OF A PEACE ACCORD:
As we earlier observed, in October 1987 the Union government dismissed the elected Akali government in Punjab on the ground that it had failed to safeguard the Hindu interests in the State against the Sikh militant attacks. The government under Chief Minister Surjit Singh Barnala had been formed in September 1985 when the Akali Dal, representing the spirit of the Accord which the India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the President of the Akali Dal Harcharan Singh Longowal had signed in 24 July 85, won 72 out of 117 seats in the elections to the State Legislative Assembly. The Sikh militants had already assassinated Longowal for compromising with a central government guilty of destroying the Golden Temple and of conniving in the Delhi massacre of November 84. But the Akali Dal under Barnala stood by the terms of the Accord, which promised to "usher in an era of amity, goodwill and cooperation" between the Sikhs and the Center. The Accord delineated eleven points of common consent, making the following main concessions:
(a) It promised to transfer Chandigarh to Punjab by 26 January 1986, (b) to set up tribunals presided by Supreme Court judges to adjudicate the river water and territorial disputes and, (c) to refer the Akali resolution for provincial autonomy to a Commission appointed to recommend changes in the "Center-State relationship to bring out the true federal characteristics of our unitary constitution". The Accord also promised inquiry into the Delhi killings of November 1984, to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, and to restore the rule of law and human rights in Punjab.
In the event, the Central government flouted the Accord in toto. Chandigarh was not transferred to Punjab as promised. The Commissions on the river waters and territorial disputes were scuttled. Guilty for the November 1984 massacre in Delhi remained unpunished. On 26 January 86, a large congregation of Sikhs had gathered under the leadership of Bhindranwale's followers at the site of the demolished Akal Takht to review the political developments in the State. Four days earlier, the court that had been trying the case of Indira Gandhi's assassination handed out its judgement sentencing all the accused to death by hanging. On the day of the event, the newspapers headlined that the government had shelved the main part of Longowal's accord with Rajiv Gandhi, the promise to transfer Chandigarh to Punjab before 26 January 1986. These news reports, read out from the stage to thirty thousand participants, carried home the point that India would not make the smallest concession to the Sikhs. This helped the militants, who had been isolated in the last elections.
The political resolution adopted by the congregation said that if the assassins of Indira Gandhi are hanged, they would become the first martyrs of Khalistan. The congregation also appointed a five-member panel called the Panthic Committee to guide the Sikh struggle to its goals, which the incumbent Akali government had betrayed. A repeat of the congregation, called Sarbat Khalsa, held on 13 April 1986, adopted a political resolution that asked the Sikhs to break the shackles of slavery to India. A fortnight later, the Panthic Committee declared the "formation of Khalistan", also creating its own army called Khalistan Commando Force that would fight for the objective. The next day, the government of Punjab had to send the troops to the Golden Temple to flush out the separatists. But the members of the Panthic Committee had already disappeared. The symbolic raid, however, helped the militant cause by precipitating a split in the government of the Akali Dal. An influential section of the party, with 27 members of the Legislative Assembly, broke away from the government to form a separate group. The four most important leaders of the Akali Dal - Tohra, Badal, Sukhjinder Singh and Amrinder Singh - had left the government over this issue.

Undercover operations: Construction of the labyrinth:
Publicity of militant crimes was very helpful to the government, which needed public sanction to introduce new measures of repression in Punjab. An investigative report in the Indian Post of Bombay of 24 April 1988 indicated that sophisticated weapons allegedly used by the terrorists in some sensational attacks might in fact have been planted by the government agencies themselves. According to the story by Dhiren Bhagat, who has since died in a mysterious road accident, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), a counter espionage outfit created by Indira Gandhi, had been directly involved in illegally smuggling weapons from Afghanistan, conveying them onwards to Punjab to contrive terrorist outrages with the intention to sustain the anti-Sikh hysteria in the country.
Others involved in the Punjab scene made even more direct allegations against the high ups. One prominent person to make such an allegation was Acharya Sushil Muni, a Jain monk, who had been holding dialogues with the Sikh religious leaders and militant organizations for a solution to the Punjab problem. Sushil Muni gave an interview to a fortnightly magazine India Today about his peace mission, which he claimed had the personal backing of Rajiv Gandhi. The interview was published on 30 April 1988. Sushil Muni claimed that he had been able to persuade the militants to sign an accord by which they would have surrendered arms, following a declaration of amnesty. But the government backed out of the commitment after he succeeded in making this extraordinary breakthrough. Sushil Muni alleged that those "who stand to gain by keeping Punjab on the brink of terrorism" had scuttled the negotiations. He also accused the "vested interests" of getting his associate in the peace process, T. S. Riyasati, a former Minister, murdered. He posed the question: "Who could be responsible for acts of violence when the major extremist organizations were all condemning them?" Sushil Muni added: "You must notice that during the earlier terrorist killings there was no TV coverage. But look how quickly TV crews now reach the scene of the massacre and telecast them in detail all over India."
More startling revelations came from Sampat Singh, Home Minister of Haryana, the only State in northern India ruled by a non-Congress party since December 87. Speaking to the press on 25 April 1989, the Home Minister of Haryana claimed evidence to show that the Union Home Minister and the Agricultural Minister patronized some groups of killers in Punjab. He promised to furnish complete evidence if the Prime Minister cared to institute an inquiry.
My own researches in Punjab of that period suggested that the State agencies were creating vigilante outfits with the view to infiltrate and break the ranks of real radicals. They also benefited by engineering heinous crimes, attributed to Sikh militants, which inspired moral revulsion against the separatist struggle. I had a discussion on the subject with Bhan Singh, the Secretary of the SGPC who had been managing the affairs of once powerful Sikh religious organization for over a decade. I talked to Bhan Singh a week before he was killed reportedly by separatist militants on 25 July 1988. After the Army action against the Golden Temple in June 1984, Bhan Singh's main responsibility had been to look after the personal welfare and legal defense of people who had been arrested from the temple complex and were being held in a Rajasthan jail without trial. Bhan Singh had his office inside the Golden Temple complex and was able to closely observe the developments inside the shrine. He believed that just as Bhindranwale, in his initial days, had been encouraged by the Congress party, so also the Congress government in Delhi was condoning the new breed of militants entrenched inside the Golden Temple with the view to weaken the Akali Dal's political base. He pointed out that given the tight security around the Golden Temple, it was inconceivable that any one should be able to bring large dumps of arms inside without official complicity. I asked him if in his opinion there were no genuine militants in Punjab. Bhan Singh gave the following answer:
"Genuine militants are not entrenched within the Golden Temple. They won't lurk behind its sanctity to save their skins temporarily while inviting its repeated desecration by the government forces. They fight their battles out in the open."
I asked if the government agencies were responsible for all heinous crimes attributed to the separatist militants. Bhan Singh said, with good sense, that there must be just as many anti-social elements involved in crime as there had been before the start of the political crisis. But the government was manipulating the media to attribute all crimes to separatist militants. This was helping the government to generate a public reaction, which it used to deny justice to the Sikhs.
Kripal Singh, a Member of Parliament from Amritsar for many terms and the President of the Chief Khalsa Dewan (a prestigious organization from the days of Sikh renaissance in early 20th century), corroborated these views. Kripal Singh told me that the government agencies had been creating many armed vigilante groups out of anti-social riff-raff, so as to infiltrate and neutralize genuine militant outfits. But these government hirelings usually reverted to their habits of compulsive criminality and often ended up fighting their personal enemies. The outrages they committed were routinely blamed on the separatist groups.
Gurdayal Singh, who had retired as the Inspector General of Police for Punjab in April 1966, provided the clinching evidence. He was Lahore's Superintendent of Police before India's partition in 1947. As the Deputy Inspector General (Intelligence) from 1952 to 1956 he had closely followed the movement for the creation of a Punjabi speaking State. One of his main tasks was to neutralize the Communist insurgency in parts of Punjab, which had been led by Teja Singh Swatantra in the years between 1950 and 1960. Because of his reputation as an officer who had successfully handled many explosive situations, the rulers of Punjab still consulted him on how to deal with the separatist violence. Governor of Punjab Sidhartha Shankar Ray and his Police Chief Julio Ribeiro had deliberated with him on their plans to create armed groups that would take on the militant menace without involving the State apparatus directly. Gurdayal Singh advised them not to pursue these plans as, in his opinion, unscrupulous elements would thrive under official patronage.
Apparently, Ray and Ribeiro went ahead with their undercover operations, using informers and infiltrators from the underworld. Ribeiro concedes this in his book "Bullet for Bullet", which he authored after his retirement. Ribeiro writes with extraordinary candor: "In Punjab there were some persons with criminal propensities, who were known to police officers at various levels. They were approached and a few of them agreed to form groups which would move in the guise of terrorists and confront the real militants in their dens… The police did give them financial and logistical support, but their demands grew to an extent where it was impossible to satisfy them within our resources. Besides, they were very greedy people, with a criminal tendency, who began to prey on law-abiding, rich citizens on the assumption that the police were indebted to them and so would do nothing to stop them."
One such particular man, recommended to Ribeiro by Gur Iqbal Singh Bhullar, a senior police officer, was a smuggler who had once been a police constable. He was reinstated and located in Patiala to search out and neutralize dreaded militants, with the permission to use force. Once he drove into Ribeiro's official residence to escape the Chandigarh police, who chased him after he killed two supposed terrorists on the main road of the city. Ribeiro later found out that this operative committed a robbery in Jammu, with the policemen in his squad participating. The Director General of Police was still contemplating action, when the operative managed to shoot down both the SSP and the SP of Patiala whose security officer then shot him down.
In his book, Ribeiro mentions several other undercover operations, planned by Amritsar SSP Izhar Alam and other officers. The book also narrates how KPS Gill, then Inspector General of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), thwarted all his attempts to discipline his men who had committed atrocities, by pleading with the Union Home Ministry not to sanction their prosecution. Later, Gill replaced Ribeiro by persuading the Governor and the leaders in Delhi that he alone was capable of "the harder line of action that was required to put down the terrorists."
Ribeiro himself is known to have publicly first propounded the policy of "bullet for bullet", as reported in the Hindustan Times of 11 April 1986. He later denied it, though: According to him, it was Arun Nehru, then Union Minister of State for Internal Security, who put these words in the mouth of the correspondent. Be that as it may, dismissal of Barnala's government in October 1987 was preceded by a significant public exchange in which some Akali ministers accused Ribeiro of upholding an extra-judicial approach in handling the separatist militancy. The DGP had alleged that the elected ministers and legislators were offering support and shelter to militants. Ribeiro himself was convinced that the President's Rule was imposed on Punjab because, "the Haryana elections were to be held some time towards the end of May, and the government at the Center wished to show the Hindu majority that it was opposed to the soft-pedalling vis-à-vis the Sikh terrorist activities, favored by the Akalis. Bhajan Lal, the Haryana Congress Chief Minister, Ray and Sardar Buta Singh, the Union Home Minister, all felt that the Congress's electoral prospect would improve if the Center was projected as being very firm." Referring to an interview which Barnala gave to the Times of India on 11 May 87, Ribeiro mentions that the Congress had lost the West Bengal and Kerala elections, and so the stakes in Haryana were very high.

The Legislative Apparatus of Counterinsurgency:
In the event, the Congress did lose the elections in Haryana. Meanwhile, the situation in Punjab was witnessing a runaway deterioration, with a steep increase in the daily reports of Sikh extremist outrages and summary executions by the security forces. In March 1988, the Indian parliament passed the 59th Amendment of the Constitution which enabled the central government to extend the President's rule in the State beyond one year; to impose emergency on the ground of "internal disturbance" and to suspend Article 21 of the Constitution which guaranteed that no person shall be deprived of life and liberty except according to the procedure established by law.
The Union government dragooned this unheard-of constitutional amendment through parliament, despite all the special legislation already at its disposal (which legislation, be it said in passing, not only conflicted with the elemental principles of due process, but also eliminated the existing legal safeguards of free and fair trial).
The legislation already in force included the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, which provided death sentence for terrorist actions resulting in death and the minimum term of five years in imprisonment extendable to life for other offences. Section 21 of TADA commanded the presumption of guilt against the accused. Its definition of "abetment" in section 2(1)(a) eliminated the proof of criminal intention. The section 15 of TADA allowed a police officer of the Superintendent's rank to record confessions of the accused in custody and to use them as evidence against them. Preclusion of anticipatory bail by 20(7) of TADA destroyed the protection, which the section 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure offers to the innocent against manifest abuse of police power. Section 20(4)(b) of TADA allowed sixty days of police custody of an accused under interrogation, and one year of judicial remand without bail. Section 20(8) prohibited bail even when the prosecution failed to furnish a charge sheet after ninety days of arrest. The section said that no person accused of an offence under TADA would be released on bail unless the designated court was satisfied on "reasonable grounds" that "he is not guilty of such offence and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail." The Act did not explain how the accused should adduce the evidence of his innocence in the absence of a charge sheet, or how the judge should authenticate his guiltlessness ahead of the actual trial, and go on to certify that he would not "commit any offence while on bail." TADA cases were heard in special courts by executive magistrates who were appointed centrally. The hearings were held in camera, and could be held in locations far removed from the disturbed area itself. In March 1994, the Supreme Court of India upheld the validity of TADA.
Apart from TADA and the Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act, 1984, there were also other black laws like the National Security Act, 1980, as amended by the Act 24 of 1984 specifically with the reference to "the extremist and terrorist elements in the disturbed areas of Punjab and Chandigarh". The Act provided for detention without charge or trial for one year in all parts of India, and two years in Punjab. Also in force was the Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act, which empowered the security forces to enter and search any premises, and to arrest any person without warrant. It also allowed the security forces to destroy any place on the suspicion of being a "terrorist hideout" and to shoot to kill a suspected terrorist with immunity from prosecution. If the officers of the Punjab police failed in bringing terrorists to book, in spite of TADA and other draconian legislation, their obsession with extra-judicial activities to the negation of arduous and lustreless tasks of regular police work, must squarely take the blame.

Early investigations and the first reports on State atrocities:
From early 1988, when reports of police atrocities amidst the escalation of the Sikh separatist violence became regular part of the news from Punjab, I as a member of the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab began to travel in the State to investigate. During these travels, I came in close contact with many who had suffered illegal detention, interrogation under torture and other atrocities. The cases in which there were witnesses to illegal arrests and custodial torture before the police announced their deaths in encounters were rare in comparison to others in which persons were whisked away by unidentified men, appearing out of the blue, in vehicles without number plates, to be taken to undisclosed places for interrogation, and to disappear for ever. I documented dozens of such cases. Rarely in some instances, the disappeared returned from the "dragon's belly". Some of them survived when the High Court of Punjab and Haryana or the Supreme Court of India issued directions for their production. I became directly involved several such cases. I also got involved with the case of Avtar Singh Sidhu, a leader of the Youth Akali Dal from Muktsar, which brought us in first direct confrontation with K. P. S. Gill, then Director General of Punjab Police. Sidhu had been helpful in gathering information on several cases of faked encounters in his region. On 30 September 1988, the police raided his house and a shop of pesticides owned by him in Muktsar. Sidhu was not present at either place. Many of his relatives including his younger brother were taken into custody to force him to surrender. On 14 October 1988, Sidhu surrendered himself to the custody of K. P. S. Gill at the latter's residence in Chandigarh, in the presence of Amrinder Singh, scion of the Patiala royalty. When three weeks later Sidhu had still not been produced before a magistrate, I and two other members of the Committee went to Faridkot and requested the Senior Superintendent of Police to grant an interview with the detainee. The SSP admitted to Sidhu's detention, but expressed inability to grant our request since the DGP himself was handling the case. We then approached the DGP at Chandigarh. Gill took our application and promising to respond to the request for interview in due course, chided us for "disturbing him at odd hours on unimportant issues". We also gave the particulars of the case to the Secretary of the Punjab's Governor who assured us that he would place them before the Governor. Sidhu was released on 30 November 1988, and he gave us a long interview on his ordeals.
I also came across several examples of purely bestial abuse of police powers, against the absolutely innocent and the meek. In one case, the police officer in-charge of a post at village Bham in Batala subdivision of Gurdaspur district, kidnapped two teenage girls Salvinder Kaur and Sarabjit Kaur in front of eye-witnesses in his official jeep. The officer in-charge of police station in HarGobindpur denied their custody. Four days later, their naked distended bodies were recovered from a nearby canal. Officers of HarGobindpur police station tried to pressurise the parents to sign a declaration that the bodies were unidentified and unclaimed, and were threatened that they would be eliminated in an "encounter" if they disobeyed. But the Sub-divisional Magistrate of Batala interfered and had the bodies handed over to the parents for cremation. One month later, the Senior Superintendent of Police of the district told a newspaper that the policeman alleged to have kidnapped the girls was actually having an affair with one of them. The policeman was later arrested on charges of kidnapping, rape and murder to be soon released on bail, as the prosecution did not file a charge-sheet against him within the stipulated period of three months.
I also came across examples of the police terrorising the whole villages in the border districts known to be militants' strongholds. Unable to distinguish silent sympathisers from active militants, the security forces were using collective humiliation and intimidation to wean them away from their political sympathies. In reality, these methods were only adding to their alienation the thrust of hatred.
The testimonies of victims of police powers, which I recorded, not only established systematic violation of the domestic and international guarantees on inalienable human rights, they also gave the lie to the grand narrative of Indian officials and their sympathisers, who were straining to portray the situation in Punjab as a war between the patriotic forces and anti-national mercenaries. The evidence collected by me discredited their claims that the government agencies represented the forces of social order, justice and legitimacy. I failed to recognise anything noble in the picture of police operations that was emerging from the collected evidence. Although some of the cases documented by me might have involved genuine extremists, I gained the impression that, for the most part, the sufferers were primarily victims of arbitrariness - of a police force that had gone haywire.
These investigations constituted the basis for detailed case studies of human rights violations, which the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab then published and circulated in the hope that testimonies of victims might persuade the public - those at least whose ears weren't stopped - that the 'war without quarter' would destroy the very basis of the nation in whose name it was being waged. The bulk of these early reports also form part of my book, published in 1991 under the title, "The Sikh Struggle: Origin, evolution and present phase".

Political consensus on State terrorism:
As we observed earlier, violence in Punjab escalated at a runaway pace after the dismissal of Barnala government. Large number of criminal elements, who passed for militants, had occupied the rooms inside the circumference of the Golden Temple. They summoned prosperous citizens to their rooms and made them cough up large amounts of money. They were also killing the recalcitrant, burying the bodies under the rubble of the Akal Takht. The government mounted a new Operation in May 1988 to displace these bandits from the holy shrine. With Amritsar under curfew, the commandos of the National Security Guard, equipped with sniper rifles and night vision equipment, shot down more than thirty entrenched militants over the next week. Baba Uttam Singh of Khadur Sahib, a friend of the Union Home Minister, appeared on the side of the security forces to direct his followers to surrender. On 15 May, 150 of them gave up; three days later the remaining forty-eight. But the Inspector General Chaman Lal told the press that the committed militant groups had not taken shelter inside the temple. Although the Operation purveyed some strategic gains to the government, including good publicity, it had no effect on controlling the militant outrages.
Meanwhile, Simranjit Singh Mann, former police officer, arrested on charges of sedition, was emerging as the new star on the horizon of the Sikh politics. As Faridkot's SSP, Mann had been close to Bhindranwale. The government found out about his link and transferred him to Bombay. He would have been dismissed from the service if Amrinder Singh, the scion of Patiala royality, had not interceded in Mann's favor. Mann and Amrinder Singh are close relatives, their wives being sisters. After Operation Blue Star, Mann wrote a strong emotional letter to President Zail Singh. In the letter, he upbraided the President for not resigning, after the Indian army, under his supreme command, had destroyed the Akal Takht. The letter became public and Mann was dismissed from the service. He went underground and was arrested in November 84 while trying to cross the border into Nepal, ostensibly to organize the Sikh resistance from abroad. Later, he was also charged of conspiring to assassinate Indira Gandhi. His defiance of the government made him very popular with the Sikhs. Mann had already been nominated as the President of the United Akali Dal, an outfit launched by Bhindranwale's old father who had been pushed by the extremists to become the pivot of a new political allignment. When the government announced parliamentary elections for the end of 1989, Mann declared his candidacy from Tarn Taran constituency, although he was still a prisoner. He also fielded his candidates from eight parliamentary constituencies in Punjab. The results belied the predictions of the political pundits that the division in the Sikh vote would benefit the Congress Party. The group under Mann swept the polls by bagging six out of thirteen parliamentary seats in Punjab. Four additional constituencies elected independent candidates who had received his blessings. Mann himself created a record in his constituency by polling 527, 707 out of the total of 591,883 valid votes cast.
The Congress Party lost the elections at the national level to the Janata Dal, a new formation under V. P. Singh who had resigned his position as the Finance Minister under Rajiv Gandhi to accuse the latter of gargantuan corruption in arms deals. The manifesto of the Janata Dal had promised to end the abuse of civil liberties in Punjab, and to solve the unrest in the State through dialogue in a democratic spirit. Returning from prison to Punjab in his new role as a political leader, Mann promised to strive for the fulfilment of Sikhs' aspirations by adopting the Constitutional means. Speaking to the massive crowd that gathered to welcome him in Punjab on 3 December 89, Mann said: "First we would try out the constitutional ways to get the demands of the Sikhs fulfilled… If the government fails to satisfy the Sikhs, we shall follow a path according to our nation's consensus". According to the newspaper reports, there was no trace of either bitterness or hubris in his meek voice. After consulting all the organisations involved in the struggle, Mann set out five preconditions for the central government to fulfil before they could discuss more substantial political questions. They were:
(1) It should express repentance and seek forgiveness for the army assault on the Golden Temple. (2) It should adopt a condolence motion in both the Houses of Parliament to commemorate those Sikhs who had been killed during the November 84 riots, and take steps to punish those who had orchestrated the anti-Sikh mayhem. (3) It should release from prisons and reinstate those Sikh soldiers who had revolted in the wake of the Operation Blue Star. (4) It should register criminal proceedings against the officials in Punjab including Governor Ray, his police advisor Julio Ribeiro and DGP K. P. S. Gill who excelled all in the policy of blind repression. (5) It should repeal the black laws which violated the fundamental rights of citizens and withdraw from Punjab the paramilitary forces occupying the State.
For a government that had promised justice and restoration of democracy, these conditions should have been agreeable. But the new government, whose Prime Minister staged a theatrical drive through the crowded lanes of Amritsar in an open jeep and proclaimed that "a new era has begun", decided not to come under pressure by accepting their preconditions for a "dialogue". The most bizarre of all was the decision of the government to hold consultations with those moderate groups of the Akalis who had been routed in the elections. These leaders like Prakash Singh Badal and Surjit Singh Barnala advised the central government not to hold elections to the State Assembly as they feared an abrupt end to their own political careers in the new climate. The Janata Dal government not only decided to withhold the Assembly elections, thereby thwarting the process of democracy, but also to retain those police officials who had earned notoriety for human rights violations. "Improving law and order", euphemism for continuation of the police Raj, remained the guiding principle of the new government's policy. This combining with the media build-up that portrayed the new Sikh team as a bunch of fanatics destroyed whatever chance there may have been in resolving the conflict through a rational process of give and take.
Mann could not establish a rapport with the new government, even as the situation in Punjab became increasingly anarchical. On 21 December 89, the security personnel at the Parliament House refused permission to a newly elected Sikh member Dhyan Singh Mand to enter the House along with his sword. Mand refused to take the oath of his membership without it. Mann himself declined to enter Parliament unless the government allowed the newly elected members to carry their swords within the House.

BULLETS AGAINST THE BALLOT:
The government of V. P. Singh fell in November 1990, through defections engineered by his own Party's President, Chandrashekhar. The Congress Party under Rajiv Gandhi installed him as the Prime Minister by supporting his breakaway group of 54 in the House of 542. The Congress withdrew the support in March 1991, forcing fresh polls to elect a new parliament. Chandrashekhar had been hobnobbing with the Sikh militant organizations with the hope to solve a difficult problem, to show as an achievement for his term as the Prime Minister of India. Chandrashekhar decided to hold simultaneous elections to Parliament and the State Assembly in Punjab, a decision that all other national parties vociferously opposed.
Most of the Sikh militant organizations themselves called for a boycott of the elections. The terrorists gunned down candidate after candidate, even as 80,000 paramilitary personnel and eventually the army drove around in their armored vehicles. More than 20 candidates fell to the terrorist bullets as the period of campaigning drew to an end. Chandrashekar's Home Minister, a candidate for parliament from Ludhiana, providentially escaped an attempt on his life. Rajiv Gandhi, visiting Chandigarh on 14 May, promised to cancel the polls in Punjab if his party got elected to Parliament with a majority. The Congress was returned as the single largest party in parliament, although Rajiv Gandhi himself was killed by a woman member of LTTE, a Tamil separatist guerilla group in Sri Lanka. Narsimha Rao of the Congress Party became the Prime Minister and instructed the Election Commission to cancel the polls in Punjab. KPS Gill, whom Chandrashekhar had shifted to Delhi as the Chief of the CRPF, returned to Punjab once again as the Director General of Police.
Since the dismissal of Barnala's government in Punjab, the Union government had changed party hands three times. However, these changes made no difference either to the government's political approach in regard to the problem of unrest in Punjab or to the basic patterns of police functioning in the State. From the very beginning, political elements within the government are known to have hobnobbed with one militant faction or the other. However, there never was any attempt to initiate discussions with the extremist groups on the basis of concrete issues which constituted the hard-core of Sikh discontent. All overtures and contacts were always essentially mercenary in nature, based on calculations of short-term political advantages and negativating the prospects of transparent deliberations on the merits of the issues involved.

POLL BOYCOTT: ENGINEERING OF A MANDATE:
In November 1991, Punjab came under the Disturbed Areas Act, which gave the security forces extensive powers to search, detain and interrogate anyone without judicial warrants. Along with these steps, the central government announced that the elections to parliament and the State Assembly for Punjab would be held in the first quarter of 1992. A meeting of all the major Akali Sikh groups held on 4 January 1992, decided to boycott the elections. The government reported 28 per cent of polling. The turnout in the urban areas was between 25 and 40 per cent. In the rural constituencies it was between 5 and 20 per cent. The results declared on 20 February, returned the Congress with a two-thirds majority in the State Assembly. Beant Singh, who had been dismissed from the Ministry of Darbara Singh in 1983 on the charge of having instigated a faked encounter, formed a Congress ministry as the new Chief Minister of Punjab.

SILENCING THE HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS:
The state government projected its 'success at the hustings' - a pradicatable consequence of the poll-boycott by the main Akali groups - as the democratic mandate, which it had received to stamp out the Sikh separatist militancy by whatever means. Several human rights groups in Punjab, although disorganised and faction-ridden, had been embarrassing the government by publicising police excesses. The government under Chief Minister Beant Singh decided it had to silence these groups before tackling the larger problems of militancy in Punjab's countryside.
Ram Singh Biling, a reporter with the Punjabi daily newspaper Ajit and the Secretary of Punjab Human Rights Organisation for his home district of Sangrur, was picked up and unceremoniously executed soon after the Congress government took office. Then came the turn of Ajit Singh Bains, retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and Chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organization. His illegal arrest in April 1992 was not acknowledged for two days. Bains was manhandled, abused and publicly exhibited in handcuffs. Later, his arrest was formalised under TADA. The accusation was that Bains had taken part in a secret meeting of militant leaders, held at Anandpur on March 18, where they hatched a conspiracy to carry out "terrorist actions". An inquiry later ordered by the High Court of Punjab established that Ajit Singh Bains' name did not figure in the original First Information Report about the "illegal meeting". However, the idea of arresting Bains was not to secure his conviction under the law, but to paralyse PHRO, and to demoralise other human rights groups with the example. Chief Minister Beant Singh told the State Legislative Assembly on April 6 that his government would not release Bains because his organisation was engaged "in defending terrorists".
A human rights lawyer, Jagwinder Singh, was picked up from his house in Kapurthala by a group of uniformed policemen on 25 September 1992 evening. Although the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary promised to intervene, Jagwinder Singh never returned.
On 18 May 1992, Amritsar police picked up Param Satinderjit Singh, a student of Guru Nanak Dev University, from the university campus. He was forced to identify suspected sympathisers of the separatist cause within the university, who were also picked up. The police brought Param Satinderjit Singh to the university campus several times for this purpose. The university students held a demonstration to protest against the abduction, and his father went on a hunger strike. But Param Satinderjit Singh was not released. There was no trace of him thereafter.
Punjab government kept up the pressure on the PHRO by arresting Malwinder Singh Malli, General Secretary of the organisation, in August 1992. Malli was also the editor of "Paigam", a vernacular journal affiliated to a Marxist-Leninist group, whose work in the field had led to several exhaustive reports on police atrocities. Elimination of Ram Singh Biling and Jagwinder Singh, and arrests of Ajit Singh Bains and Malwinder Singh Malli effectively paralysed the regional human rights groups. Now the security forces could give undivided attention to eliminate the ring-leaders of the separatist militancy.

DECIMATION OF THE GUERILLA GROUPS:
The Sikhs of Punjab had never clearly understood the rationale of the militants' objectives. These groups in their hay-day had generally relied on atavistic sympathies in the preasantry to find hideouts and had received enough support to keep up their operations. But now, with the rural Sikhs in total dismay over the new state of affairs, militants found themselves helpless against the security forces, which began to hunt them down like fair game. Thus, within six months of assuming office, the government of Beant Singh was able to break the backbone of the Sikh militant movement. Main leaders of guerrilla outfits were either killed, or compelled to flee the scene. Hundreds of them also surrendered. Thousands of others suffered torture in custody, long periods of illegal imprisonment and myriad other forms of physical and psychological torment. I have exhaustively documented the historical context of the Sikh separatist violence, its political and psychological aspects and its irrationality in my second book on Punjab, published by Ajanta Books International in 1997 under the title: "The Sikh Unrest and the Indian State: Politics, Personalities and Historical retrospective."

THE WAR WITHOUT QUARTER:
Following the decimation of the guerrilla groups under Beant Singh's government in Punjab, the cleansing the countryside of militant sympathisers apparently became the next main task of the security forces in the State. According to the police figures, published in 1993, security forces in Punjab killed 2,119 militants in the year 1992 under the euphemism of "encounters". A larger number of people in the border districts, picked up by the police for interrogation, simply "disappeared". Evidence that later surfaced showed that the "disappeared" were killed and their bodies quietly disposed of. First there appeared reports that Punjab's irrigation canals had become the dumping ground for bodies of killed militants and their sympathisers. Reports carried by the Pioneer on 26 and 27 March 1992 said that the government of Rajasthan had formally complained to Punjab's Chief Secretary that these canals were carrying large number of dead bodies into the State. The newspaper reports also said that many dead bodies, with hands and feet tied together, were being fished out when water in-flow in canals was stopped for repair works.

EVIDENCE OF MASS CREMATIONS:
Jaswant Singh Khalra from Amritsar, then General Secretary of Shiromani Akali Dal's Human Rights Wing, produced more incriminating evidence in the form of official records from the cremation grounds of Amritsar, Patti and Tarn Taran for the year 1992. These records showed that the police had burnt more than 1400 bodies in these three cremation grounds alone by stating that they were unclaimed or unidentified. Khalra himself had to become an unidentified body before the Supreme Court would take note of the matter and order the Central Bureau of Investigation to undertake a comprehensive inquiry. While alive, all his endeavors and years of campaigning for accountability and justice had met with institutional disdain, public ridicule - and finally death in the oblivion of enforced disappearance. When Khalra went with his records to the Punjab and Haryana High Court through a Writ Petition No. 990 of 1995 to ask for an independent investigation, the court dismissed it in limine with the remarks that it was "too vague" and that the petitioner had no locus standi in the matter.

FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS:
Following the dismissal, I, along with Khalra, traveled extensively in the region of Amritsar to investigate his claims. Examination of cremation records from the office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths showed that three hundred bodies were cremated as unidentified/ unclaimed in 1992 alone at the Durgiana mandir cremation grounds even though in the case of one hundred and twelve the names had actually been recorded. Forty-one were shown as having died of bullet injuries. A firewood purchase register maintained at the Patti municipal cremation grounds showed that five hundred and thirty-eight bodies were cremated as unidentified/ unclaimed between 1991 and 1994. After examining these records, I talked to attendants of the cremation grounds, the doctors who had conducted post-mortems and also the relatives of victims who furnished the necessary evidence to establish linkages between the disappearances and illegal cremations. Two attendants of the cremation ground at Patti told me that the police would often buy firewood for the cremation of one or two persons but would cremate several bodies together on a single pyre. The Chief Medical Officer of the Civil Hospital at Patti confessed that a post-mortem was completed in less than five minutes: The whole procedure had been simplified to the extent that it meant no more than filling a paper that announced the cause of death and the time of death, with the policemen providing the information. He also gave me gruesome details of Sarabjit Singh's post-mortem. On 30 October 1993, a dead body, supposedly that of Sarabjit Singh, was brought to Patti hospital by the officers of Valtoha police station in Amritsar district for post-mortem. The doctor who was to carry out the autopsy discovered that the man who had a bullet injury on his head was still breathing. Thereupon, Valtoha police officers insisted on taking him away. After some time, they brought him back, now dead for good, and forced a different doctor to fill-in an autopsy report. Although a nurse in the hospital was able to identify Sarabjit Singh, and also knew where his parents lived, the police officers took away the body for a hasty cremation. I was also able to interview many serving police officers who, on the condition of anonymity, provided detailed narratives which explained abductions, custodial torture, summary executions and illegal cremations as aspects of a strategy to weed out the Sikh separatist militancy from the roots

THE CASE BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT:
On the basis of these investigations, Delhi based Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, of which I am a member, invoked Articles 32, 21, 19 and 14 to move the Supreme Court of India through a Writ Petition (Crl.) No. 447/95, filed on 3 April 1995. The petition backed with the records of illegal cremations at Durgiyana Mandir in Amritsar city and at Patti subdivision drew the attention of the court to the problem of disappearances in the State of Punjab, which was now reinforced by the evidence that its police force had been cremating thousands of bodies labelled as "unidentified" at various crematoria in the State. This was the asseveration in the first paragraph of the petition.
The second paragraph stated that over two thousand families in Amritsar alone have one or more "disappearances" to report. It is in this context that the court must examine the records of illegal cremations of 300 "unidentified" bodies at the Durgiana Mandir in 1992 and of 538 "unidentified" bodies at Patti between 1991 and October 1994. The petition pointed out that out of 300 bodies brought to the Durgiana Mandir in 1992, the names of 112 are actually recorded although they were cremated as unidentified. Forty-one were shown as having died of bullet injuries or in "police encounters". Cause of death of remaining 259 was not given.
The record showed that some of the bodies burnt at Durgiyana Mandir came from outside Amritsar; few from outside the State. One body was shown to come from Chamkaur Saheb in Ropar district. Two of them were shown to have been picked up in Uttar Pradesh and two others from Sopore in Jammu and Kashmir.
After analysing the Patti's firewood purchase records in the like fashion, the petition pointed out that according to the personnel of the crematorium and some farmers in its vicinity, the police had often been purchasing wood for one body but burnt several. With the result that they had to often collect half burnt and charred remains of bodies which stray dogs carried away from the pyres to adjoining fields and had to either cremate them again at their own expense or to dump them in the Rajasthan Feeder Canal.
Clause eighteen of the fifth paragraph in the petition went on to affirm that "These cremations are only part of the story. Punjab is full of canals. Reports about the recovery of dead bodies from all the major and minor canals of the State have been appearing in the local and the national press for the last several years. Clearly, these dead bodies are linked to the "disappearances" reported all over the State."
The paragraph four had already pointed out the main thrust of the petition, which was to affirm "a systematic and sustained policy of murder/extrajudicial execution and disposal of dead bodies by the police all over the State."
The petition then pointed out the grounds on which the Supreme Court was being moved: (a) As the ultimate repository and enforcer of citizens fundamental rights, the court had no option but to act on the disclosures made by the petition, even if partly borne out to be true. (b) Unless the court intervened to establish the truth, to bring the culprits to book and to suitably compensate the next of kin, the people of Punjab would completely lose faith in the possibility of justice within the system, a disillusionment that could give rise to fresh orgies of violence. (c) The court must direct the respondents to give clear explanation as to how the events narrated in the petition were allowed to occur and also direct them to place all information and evidence to "facilitate identification of the cremated persons" before the Inquiry Commission to be constituted. (d) It would not be possible to determine the identity of the cremated bodies unless the court ordered a comprehensive inquiry.
A separate application for interim directions, also filed on 3 April 1995, said that as the entire hierarchy of the Punjab police stood accused, the court had to order a full scale inquiry, also ensuring that the accused were unable to further tamper or destroy evidence. The court should, therefore, direct the the CBI or any other independent agency to commence the investigation and to immediately seize all the records, including the Daily Diary registers and the registers and files maintained under Rule 25.38 of the Punjab Police Rules, which lay down the procedure for the cremation of unidentified and unclaimed bodies. The application also requested the court to ensure full protection from harassment, intimidation and threats to all witnesses and human rights workers connected with the investigation and pursuit of the matter.

DISAPPEARANCE OF JASWANT SINGH KHALRA:
Jaswant Singh Khalra had for some time been receiving direct and indirect threats from the police officials of Amritsar district, particularly from Tarn Taran's Senior Superintendent of Police Ajit Singh Sandhu. The later had warned that unless Khalra ceased his involvement in the matter, he would also become an unidentified body. Although Khalra's friends and associates, including then President of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee and a senior Akali leader Gurcharan Singh Tohra, advised him to leave the scene for a while, he refused to take to flight, and stuck with his human rights work in his native region.
On 6 September 1995 morning, the armed commandos of Punjab police kidnapped Khalra from outside his house in Amritsar. A bench of the Supreme Court under Justice Kuldip Singh treated a telegram about the abduction, which it received from Gurcharan Singh Tohra, as a petition for the writ of habeas corpus and issued notice to the Punjab authorities to either produce Khalra or account for his whereabouts. The S. P. Sukhdev Singh Chhina of Amritsar city filed affidavits to claim that Khalra was not wanted in connection with any case and that the police had not arrested him. Other officials also filed affidavits to maintain that the Punjab authorities were making all efforts to trace Khalra, contending at the same time that he might have become a victim of inter gang rivalries. SSP Sandhu of Tarn Taran also filed a statement to deny that he had ever threatened Khalra. Meanwhile, Paramjit Kaur Khalra had also filed a regular petition for a writ of habeas corpus, giving a detailed description of the abduction on the basis of eye-witness accounts. On 13 October 95, Advocate-General for the State of Punjab M. L. Sarin assured the court that he was personally supervising the investigation into Khalra's disappearance.

FOUR AFFIDAVITS IN THE CREMATIONS MATTER:
Meanwhile, another bench of the Supreme Court that had been hearing the Committee's Writ Petition (Crl.) No. 447/95 asked us to establish a real connection between the complaints of police abductions and reports on illegal cremations. Only then the court would entertain the petition and issue notice to the Punjab authorities. On 11 October 1995, the Committee filed four affidavits from relatives of persons abducted and disappeared by the Punjab police officials, who also prayed for a comprehensive inquiry. Life chronicles furnished by these four relatives of abducted persons compellingly established the connection between abductions, disappearances and secret disposal of dead bodies.

PYRE HUNTING OF A FATHER:
1. Sixty-five years old Baldev Singh from Amritsar had retired from 9 Punjab Regiment of the Indian army after being seriously injured during the war with Pakistan in 1965, which he fought at Punch sector in Jammu and Kashmir. Baldev Singh's eldest daughter Manjit Kaur had been India's star female weight-lifter, earning nineteen gold medals. She had also represented India in many international events, including the Asian Games held in Peking. His youngest twenty-five years old son Pragat Singh earned his livelihood from a dairy farm. The police began to harass him, picking him up for interrogation and torturing him in illegal custody. Unable to put up with the harassment, Pragat Singh went away from the house but was arrested on 19 September 1990 when he was watching a film at Sandhu Talkies, a cinema hall of Amritsar, along with his cousin Chayan Singh. On 5 November 1992, newspapers reported Pragat Singh's death in a supposed armed encounter with the police near Raja Sansi, a suburb of Amritsar. Baldev Singh talked to an employee at the General Hospital in Amritsar where the post-mortem of the dead body had been conducted. The employee's description of the body matched Pragat Singh's. Baldev Singh reached the Durgiyana Mandir cremation ground in the nick of time even as the police had just lit the pyre. The head was already burning, but the rest of the body was still intact. His son Pragat Singh was burning. Although Baldev Singh was allowed to carry the ashes for the last rites, the abduction and the illegal cremation remained officially unacknowledged. Traumatized by the incident, Pragat Singh's sister Manjit Kaur never again took part in competitive sport.

A CLEAN SWEEP:
2. Lakhwinder Kaur from Tarn Taran in Amritsar district was the mother of thirty-five years old Hardev Singh, a farmer and a member of the All India Sikh Students Federation. Hardev Singh disappeared after the police kidnapped him from the house of a colleague on 28 September 1992.

TEACHING A LESSON:
3. Baljit Kaur, also from Tarn Taran in Amritsar district, was married to a head constable of the Punjab police. Her brother Balwinder Singh, the elected head of the village council of Chabal Khurd, had been vocal against the police abuses and therefore had become an eyesore for the authorities. On 8 March 93, Balwinder Singh was picked up from his house by Balbir Singh, officer in-charge of Chabal police station. The next day, a group of police officials brought Balwinder Singh to his village and thrashed him there publicly until he fell unconscious. Later, he was taken back to the CIA interrogation center in Tarn Taran. Baljit Kaur's husband found out through his police contacts that his brother-in-law was later killed there and his body secretly disposed of.

A FRIVOLOUS PLEDGE:
4. Fifty-five years old Dilip Singh from Amritsar city owned a dairy farm and was an active member of the right wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party. His twenty-six years old son Jaswinder Singh was a college student and also worked in pharmaceutical shop. Earlier, he had been arrested under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. Released on bail for lack of evidence, Jaswinder's trial was still pending. On 19 August 1992, Jaswinder Singh attended the special court at Faridkot and pleaded for a expeditious disposal of the case so that he could concentrate on his studies. The court fixed the case for final disposal the next day. The same evening, Jaswinder was abducted by armed commandos of the Punjab police when he was boarding a return bus to Amritsar. Approached by Dilip Singh for help, then Minister for Public Works in the Punjab government Joginder Singh Mann talked to SSP Jasminder Singh of Faridkot on telephone and confirmed that Jaswinder was indeed in his custody. Joginder Singh Mann gave Dilip Singh a letter introducing him to the SSP. The letter mentioned their telephonic talks about Jaswinder and requested him to meet Dilip Singh and to release his son. Dilip Singh met the SSP, who promised to let the boy go in some days. Later, he denied the custody. In early 1993, Vidya Sagar Sharma, SP of Faridkot, told Dilip Singh that Jaswinder Singh was alive and was being held in a CRPF camp. There has been no further information about Jaswinder's whereabouts.
On 11 October 1995, the Committee filed the affidavits of these relatives of the abducted and disappeared persons, supported by their prayer for a comprehensive inquiry. The matter came up for the hearing on 13 October 1995, when the court issued notices to the Punjab authorities and posted the petition for further hearing on 20 November 95.

AN INVESTIGATION INTO A GORY TALE:
Meanwhile, another bench of the Supreme Court under Justice Kuldip Singh was proceedings with the matter relating to Jaswant Singh Khalra's abduction. On 15 November 95, Punjab's Advocate-General M. L. Sareen suggested that the court should hand over the investigation of Khalra's abduction and disappearance to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Accordingly, the court directed the CBI to appoint an investigation team under a responsible officer. The court also took note of the allegations regarding police abductions, disappearances and illegal cremations, which Jaswant Singh Khalra had made in a press release dated 16 January 1995. In the 15 November 95 order instituting these inquiries, Justice Kuldip Singh observed: "In case it is found that the facts stated in the Press Note are correct - even partially - it would be a gory-tale of human rights violations. It is horrifying to visualize that dead bodies of larger number of persons - allegedly thousands - could be cremated by the police unceremoniously with a label "unidentified". Our faith in democracy and rule of law assures us that nothing of the type can ever happen in this country but the allegations in the Press Note - horrendous as they are - need thorough investigation. We, therefore, direct the Director, Central Bureau of Investigation to appoint a high powered team to investigate into the facts contained in the press note dated January 16, 1995. We direct all the concerned authorities of the State of Punjab including the DGP to render all assistance to the CBI in the investigation… The CBI shall complete the investigation regarding kidnapping of Khalra within three months… So far as the second investigation is concerned we do not fix any time limit but direct the CBI to file interim reports… after every three months."
It is important to notice that the court's order did not set any limit to the inquiry; territorial, numerical or by the mode of body disposal. It only talked about the gory tale of human rights violations, the horrendous allegations and the need to investigate the facts contained in the press note. Following this order, which fulfilled the plea for a comprehensive inquiry, the Committee's petition 447/95 was also transferred to the same bench of the court under Justice Kuldip Singh. Hereafter, both the petitions were heard simultaneously.

INTERIM REPORT AND THE PUBLIC NOTICE:
On 22 July 96, the CBI submitted an interim report that disclosed 984 illegal cremations at Tarn Taran. The CBI also asked for the court to order registration of three separate criminal cases against the police officials in respect of three deaths in suspicious circumstances. The court ordered the CBI to register the cases. It also directed the investigative agency to issue a general notice to the public at large to assist in the inquiry. The court's order dated 22 July 96 said:
"Since large number of dead bodies have been allegedly disposed of by the police it may be necessary to seek assistance from the public at large. We direct the CBI in the course of enquiry to issue a general direction to the public at large that if any person/authority/government office has any information/material which may be of any assistance to the CBI in the enquiry in this matter, the same shall be placed before the CBI. We direct Mr. P. S. Sandhu, DIG (Border) to hand over the entire relevant records to the CBI immediately."

ABDUCTORS OF KHALRA IDENTIFIED:
On 30 July 96, the CBI submitted its report on Khalra's abduction and disappearance, holding nine officers of the Punjab police under SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu responsible. At the CBI's request the court directed their prosecution on charges of conspiracy and "kidnapping with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person". The court also directed the Chief Secretary of Punjab to sanction their prosecution within three weeks of the order. The Sanction Order dated 19 August 1996 elucidated the CBI's findings that established the criminal conspiracy to abduct Jaswant Singh Khalra. The Sanction Order pointed out that on 24 October 1995, eighteen days after his abduction, Khalra was found illegally detained at Kang Police Station, by a Kikkar Singh who was also detained there illegally. The Saction Order mentioned that Kikkar Singh witnessed the injuries on Khalra's body, the evidence of his custodial torture. It went on to say that Kikkar Singh helped Khalra to eat before he was taken away from the Kang police station, never to be seen again. Kikkar Singh's illegal detention from 14 October to 11 November 1995, as elucidated in the Governor's Sanction Order, was independently corroborated by an inquiry conducted by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Chandigarh, which the High Court of Punjab and Haryana relied on to grant him monetary compensation. The evidence on record in the Governor's Order of Sanction confirmed serious offences under sections 302, 364, 346, 330, 331 and 120 of IPC. However, the offenders were arrested only under section 365 of IPC which is "kidnapping with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person", a woefully insufficient charge in the face of evidence which proved kidnapping with the intent to murder, illegal confinement, custodial torture and custodial murder. Subsequently, former Special Police Officer Kuldip Singh, who was attached to the Kang police station told the CBI that Khalra was tortured and then shot dead in the night of 24 October 1995. His dead body was quartered and thrown in river Sutlaj near Hari Ke Pattan.

COMPENSATION FOR THE "WORST CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY":
None of these facts were known to the court, which presumed Khalra to be still alive, when it ordered the prosecution of the officials on 30 July 96. On 7 August 96, the court also directed the Punjab government to pay one million rupees as interim compensation to Mrs. Khalra. The court's order said: "The fact remains that the abductors are keeping Khalra away from his family since 6 September 1995. Kidnapping of a person whose family is totally in dark about his whereabouts - even about the fact whether he is alive or dead - is the worst crime against humanity. In the facts and circumstances of this, we direct the Punjab government through the Chief Secretary, Punjab to pay a sum of Rs. 10 lacs as interim compensation to Mrs. Paramjit Kaur, wife of Mr. Jaswant Singh Khalra. In case, the police officers are convicted the State of Punjab can recover the amount from the police officers…" The court had awarded interim compensation for the crime of disappearance, which it described as the worst crime against humanity.

THE REFERENCE TO THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION:
On 10 December 1996, the CBI submitted its final and fifth report on the larger issue of police abductions and illegal disposal of dead bodies. We do not know what the CBI's inquiry report discloses on the larger patterns of enforced disappearances, extra-judicial elimination and illegal disposal of dead bodies. The court decided to keep its full contents secret, as urged by its officials on the ground that f