Return From The Dragon's Belly

The following example of illegal detention I shall cite at some length as it captures the inhuman essence of the manner in which the State has been responding to the challenge of separatism. It concerns Iqbal Singh, son of Kulwant Singh, resident of House No.89 16 Jodhu Colony, Street No.4, Muktsar, a subdivisional town in Faridkot district. The story of his woes begins from the first week of June 1984, when the Indian State launched the offensive against the Sikhs in Punjab.

On 3 June 1984 Iqbal Singh had gone to Patiala to consult a doctor, Sukhjinder Singh Dhaliwal, for treatment of the index finger of his left hand which had become gangrenous. The doctor advised an operation and asked him to come back to him after some days. Iqbal Singh wanted to go back to Muktsar the same evening as he had neither a friend nor a relative living in Patiala. However, he could not leave the city, as a curfew had been imposed in the whole of Punjab for 36 hours and the state transport had been suspended. An announcement made on the public address system said that the army will be in charge of law and order in the State during the period of curfew. He had no other refuge but to go to Dukhniwaran Gurudwara, literally meaning "Guru's refuge against distress".

The army, in its combing operations to flush out militants from their hideouts, attacked the Gurudwara. Many people were killed. Justice C.S. Tiwana, a retired judge of Punjab High Court, told me that 275 persons were shot down in that Gurudwara alone, a matter which received little public notice vis-a-vis the bigger raid on the Golden Temple of Amritsar. Iqbal Singh was arrested on the charge of having resisted the attack. He was taken into custody and interrogated for fifteen days in the course of which he suffered severe torture including application of electric shocks. After the interrogation he was detained under the National Security Act and transferred to Nabha Jail. He was also charged with offences under sections 307 (attempt to murder), 124 (sedition), 153 (waging war against the government) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 25/54/59 of the Arms Act (possession of illegal arms).

From Nabha jail he was taken to Ladha Kothi, a special jail which had been created for interrogation of detainees, and was tortured in the course of his interrogation there which lasted ten days. I shall digress a little to tell about Ladha Kothi. Ladha Kothi is a palace constructed by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala in the Raj days. According to local legend, Bhupinder Singh built this palace for a damsel from the village Ladha of whom he was so enamoured that he proposed to her to join his harem. She, however, insisted on having a palace to herself in her own village. It was built. Two days after she entered the palace, she died under mysterious circumstances. The story was related to me by Ram Swarup Sharma, a Commandant of the Central Reserve Police Force, who lived in the rooms which were once occupied by the Maharaja and his unfortunate consort when I went to see the palace on 30 April 1988. After Independence, the Kothi was converted into a police interrogation centre, because of its isolated location where "cries in agony of prisoners under torture could not be heard by anybody outside its premises", as Justice C.S. Tiwana, who conducted an inquiry into the allegation of torture of NSA detainees carried out in Ladha Kothi after the army action in Punjab in June 1984, explains. Ladha Kothi remained a police interrogation centre until 30 May 1984, six days before the army launched the attack on the Golden Temple when it was declared to be a jail by special notification issued by the Punjab government. The Superintendent and the Deputy Superintendent of police who were in charge of the interrogation centre were made into Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent of the jail. Justice C.S. Tiwana explained why this was done in his report of the inquiry he conducted. I quote from his report. "...It was in contemplation of the Operation Blue Star that a declaration about the jail was made. A detainee can be kept in a jail and not in a police station or an interrogation centre...

The initial detention of several persons being illegal and none of them having been produced before a magistrate within twenty four hours of their arrest, the government thought it better to pass orders of detention under the National Security Act... I am of the view that this kind of decision was taken by the government that by interrogation of the detainees it should be found out whether any of them could be connected with any criminal offence. This necessitated the torture of detainees at the Ladha Kothi..." According to the findings of the Justice C.S. Tiwana Commission of Inquiry, set up by the government of Punjab under the Commission of Inquiry Act on 20 November 1986, ninety two prisoners were taken out of Nabha jail alone for their interrogation at Ladha Kothi between the period of 30 August 1984 and 11 January 1985 and systematically and brutally tortured there. Iqbal Singh was one of those who had been sent to Ladha Kothi for his interrogation which lasted ten days.

The facts about Iqbal Singh's torture at Ladha Kothi were established by two separate inquiries. One was ordered by the Supreme Court of India in the writ petition (Criminal) No.378 of 1985, which a social worker from Delhi had filed, and was conducted by the District and Sessions Judge of Patiala. The second inquiry was conducted by the Justice C.S. Tiwana Commission. The Tiwana Commission recommended payment of Rs.15,000 to Iqbal in compensation of torture inflicted on him at Ladha Kothi. The Commission also recommended action against 20 police officials designated as the jail officers of Ladha Kothi and responsible for infliction of torture on detainees. After his interrogation at Ladha Kothi, Iqbal Singh was sent back to Nabha jail. Five months later his custody under NSA was revoked, not by the Government of Punjab, but by a Judicial Advisory Board constituted under the law to review all cases of detention under the National Security Act as being unjustified. He was then transferred to Patiala jail to face trial in the case which had been made out against him. In August 1985, a court in Patiala dismissed the case against him and he was released from the judicial custody on 8 August 1985. After his release he went away to Nanded, in Maharashtra to live with his brother who has a business there. He lived in Nanded until January 1988. He returned to Muktsar in January 1988, on receiving a telegram from his mother which informed him that his father was seriously ill. In Muktsar he attended on his ailing father, taking him to hospitals etc. In the meanwhile the Supreme Court of India directed the Punjab government to state what steps it had taken to implement the recommendations of the Tiwana Commission of Inquiry, in an order it passed on 28 March 1988, in the matter of the writ petition (Criminal) No. 378 of 1985, which was still pending before the court. Responding to the order, the government of Punjab filed an affidavit sworn in April 1988 which stated that in the case of Iqbal Singh the government has not yet paid the compensation as recommended by the Commission since his whereabouts were not known to the government. Iqbal Singh had actually been taken into custody in the forenoon of 12 April 1988 from outside the house of Avtar Singh Sidhu, a leader of Youth Akali Dal, in Muktsar. Sidhu was not home when Iqbal went to see him. Sidhu's mother requested him to fetch some milk from the market. As he stepped out of the house, he noticed policemen in mufti hanging around. Three Maruti cars without number plates, their window panes tinted, were parked on the road. Some of them came up to him and asked him for his name. He told them his name. Immediately they pushed him into one of the cars, blindfolded him and started driving away. However, he managed to scream out that the CIA of Faridkot was abducting him. This information was conveyed by a passerby to the family members of Avtar Singh Sidhu who subsequently informed Iqbal Singh's parents about it.

On 15 April 1988 Iqbal Singh's father Kulwant Singh and Avtar Singh Sidhu met Govind Ram, Senior Superintendent of Police, Faridkot, in an attempt to find out why Iqbal Singh was being taken into custody; why was he not being produced before a magistrate if the police had a case against him and where was he being detained. Govind Ram denied knowledge of the case and expressed inability to help them in any manner. On 22 April 1988, Iqbal Singh's mother, Devinder Kaur, learnt from a minor official of the CIA staff of Faridkot police that her son was being held at the CIA's main centre in Faridkot, near the bus stand. She also received a letter from her son, postmarked 23 April 1988. He had managed to have the letter smuggled out. I quote from the letter: "....lt must be in your knowledge that I am in the custody of the CIA staff, Faridkot since April 12... I had gone to Billu's (A.S. Sidhu) house.... From the road outside his house I was abducted by the CIA staff... My life is in danger. I might be killed in a faked encounter..."

I met Mrs. Devinder Kaur in Muktsar on 1 May 1988. Avtar Singh Sidhu and his mother had already informed me about the case. Mrs. Devinder Kaur told me about her vain attempts to persuade the police officials to release her son from their illegal custody and showed me the letter she had received from Iqbal Singh. No senior official had deigned to grant her an interview. She then wrote a letter addressed to the Supreme Court of India asking the Court to protect Iqbal Singh's life by issuing an order for his release from the illegal detention, and implored me to take all necessary steps to bring the matter before the Supreme Court. With this letter I came to Delhi and talked to two lawyer friends. Nitya Ramkrishnan and Ashok Agrawal, about the possibility of moving a petition. They prepared a habeas corpus petition and moved the Supreme Court in the name of the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, which we together had formed for the purpose of following up on such cases.

The petition (Criminal) No.220 of 1988 was taken up by the court on 10 May 1988. The famous civil liberties lawyer and retired judge of the Bombay High Court Mr. Tarkunde, argued the case before a bench of the Supreme Court. The court ordered the respondents, Home Secretary Government of Punjab, Senior Superintendent of Police, Faridkot, and the head of the department, CIA, Faridkot, to ensure production of the detainee before the nearest magistrate and arrange for his interview with his family and his lawyers. The court allowed us to serve its orders on the respondents personally. Ashok Agrawal and Nitya Ramkrishnan, as advocates along with myself went to the Secretariat of the Punjab Government in Chandigarh on 12 May 1988 at about 11 a.m. A.K. Dube, Special Secretary (Home), Government of Punjab, received the order from us. We also met the Home Secretary, S.L. Kapoor. We informed them of our intention to reach Faridkot the same evening to effect service of the orders on Senior Superintendent of Police, Faridkot and the Head of the Department, CIA Faridkot. They assured us that a teleprinter message will reach the Senior Superintendent of Police, Faridkot, in about ten minutes, apprising him of the orders of the Supreme Court to ensure production of the detainee before the nearest magistrate and to arrange for his interview with us and his family members. We reached Faridkot around 7 p.m. of the same day and went straight to the office of the SSP where we were informed that he was at his residence. We telephoned him at his residence and told him about our mission. He told us that a car for us to be taken to his residence was on its way. After about ten minutes, an open white Maruti Jeep without a number plate with three armed men in plain clothes drove into the compound of the office of the SSP. We met SSP Govind Ram around 7.45 p.m. and gave a copy of the order to him. He asked who Iqbal Singh was.

Almost instantaneously, shuffling through the pages of the petition which we gave him, he announced that his police had never taken Iqbal into custody and had no clue as to where he was. He called Joginder Singh, a Deputy Superintendent of Police who was the Head of the CIA staff in Faridkot, to his office and asked him to receive a copy of the order. He again repeated in the presence of Joginder Singh that the alleged detainee was not in their custody. He promised, however, to start a search of all the jails, locks-ups and police stations under his jurisdiction and to give us the results by next morning. He then advised us not to leave Faridkot in the night and made arrangements for our stay in the Circuit House. Joginder Singh followed us on our heels to the Circuit House and told us that he had already conducted a search in all the CIA centres in the district and the detainee was not to be found anywhere. He had indeed done a fast job. Next morning Joginder Singh came to us around 8.30 a.m. and told us again that the detainee was not to be found in any of the police stations within the district. He also told us that no record was maintained of persons arrested/ detained for the purpose of interrogation irrespective of the duration of their detention. We then went to Muktsar with the intention to inform Iqbal's mother regarding the dismal outcome of our efforts. On reaching her house we discovered to our surprise that Iqbal Singh had been released by the SSP, Faridkot the previous afternoon few hours before we had met him and heard his denials of Iqbal Singh ever having been taken into custody. We were able to meet Iqbal Singh and his mother. His mother, Mrs. Devinder Kaur, told me that she had gone to Faridkot in the forenoon of 12 May 1988 to meet the SSP and was immediately granted an interview unlike on other occasions. When she requested him to release her son, SSP Govind Ram asked her to wait outside his office.

After some time Govind Ram called her in and told her that she could go to the CIA centre near the bus stand and take her son back home. He also told her that if she talked to outsiders about her son's detention, the consequences would be dire. She then went to the CIA Centre to pick up her son. Both of them came back to Muktsar in the evening. Iqbal Singh had been severely tortured in the course of his detention. He showed me marks of injury on both his legs. I had a long interview with him on his abduction and subsequent experiences during his illegal custody. First he was hesitant to talk. When we told him that it was important for us to know the facts to support his case which was now before the Supreme Court, he opened up gradually. Excerpts of my interview with him:

Q: Do you know the names of the persons who picked you up?

A: I know the name of one of them, DSP Joginder Singh. There were fifteen or twenty.

Q: Why only his name?

A: He was sitting next to me in the car. He was the one who led me into the lock up. I learnt his name in the course of my interrogation.

Q: Where were you taken to immediately after your abduction?

A: I was taken to the CIA interrogation centre at Faridkot.

Q: You had been blindfolded and could not have seen where you were driving. How and when did you come to know that you were in the custody of the CIA staff, Faridkot?

A: At the start of my interrogation one officer asked me if I knew where I was. I said no. He then told me that I was in the custody of the CIA staff, Faridkot, which has compelled, as he said, many dreaded terrorists to confess their crimes. He also asked me if I knew whom I was talking to. I again said no. He then told me that his name was Shyam Sunder, adding that his name alone struck terror in the hearts of terrorists. (Shyam Sunder has since been killed by Sikh militants).

Q: Can you tell me about your interrogation, one thing after the other?

A: On reaching the CIA staff centre at Faridkot, I was put into an office. My blindfold was removed, I was made to crouch on the floor while DSP Joginder Singh and Inspector Shyam Sunder sat on chairs. They started questioning me immediately. Who were the militants I maintained contacts with? Who took refuge at my house? Where did I hide weapons for them ? What crimes have I committed in association with the militants? and so on. I told them the truth. I had no links with militants. No militant ever came to my house. I neither hide weapons nor have I ever done anything wrong. I told them about my association with Avtar Singh Sidhu, a leader of the Youth Akali Dal and that we were friends. I also told them about my ordeals ever since I went to Patiala in June 1984... I narrated the entire story and requested them to make inquiries to satisfy themselves whether I was speaking the truth or not. But they proceeded to torture me. I was blindfolded once again. My clothes were torn out and I was stripped naked. My turban was used to tie my hands behind my back. My right leg was squeezed into a hole in a heavy block of wood which was suspended from the ceiling. I stood balancing myself on my left leg. After half an hour my leg was removed from the kathi, and then I was taken down. The toes of my feet, were tied together as also my hands to the back. Then I was made to lie down with my back to the floor. A heavy iron pipe was put on my legs. Four policemen got on top of it while two of them held the pipe tight across my legs from both the ends and rotated it up and down. My thigh muscles ruptured. Then they started pulling my legs apart until I felt them ripping out from the pelvis. Then they started kicking me in the region of my sensitive organs. I became unconscious. I woke up in a cell I don't know after how long.

Q: Can you identify the persons who tortured you?

A: Yes, some of them: Inspector Shyam Sunder, Inspector Harbans Singh Ustad and DSP Joginder Singh carried out the torture with many of their subordinates helping them.

Q: Did you come across SSP Govind Ram in the course of your interrogation?

A: SSP Govind Ram came to the CIA centre the day after I had gone through the first round of torture. Waving his revolver at us - the detainees - he shouted that if we would not confess our crimes, he would personally shoot us all. He directed my interrogation to recommence. He stood by and gave instructions. First he ordered chilli powder to be stuffed into my anus. Then he had petrol poured into it. They started working on my legs all over again. I told the SSP that I was innocent and was being tortured unjustifiably. I fainted.

Q: For how long were you tortured in this manner?

A: This pattern repeated itself every day for one week. Very often the torturers would turn up late in the nights in a drunken state and order us out of the lockup into the interrogation room. In one week I was reduced to the state of a corpse, insensitive to further infliction of pain. My legs were swollen thick. I was delirious and ran high temperature. One day I caught the words of an officer, "If he does not gain consciousness, kill him and throw him into a canal." After some days Shyam Sunder came to me in the lock up. He admitted that my interrogation had been rather severe and unnecessary. "But you must try to recover soon. That will be in your interest. You may live if you can be on your legs." But my legs were just paining flesh and I saw no chance of my ever being up on them. One day Shyam Sunder took me out in a matador van. I thought he was going to kill me. But the van drove to a hospital near Brijendra College behind the bus stand. A Sikh doctor examined me.

Q: What was his name?

A: I don't know?

Q: Do you remember the date?

A: It was 18th or l9th of April. The doctor gave me an injection. I thought he was giving me poison. I did not care. The doctor gave me some medicine too. I was then driven back to the lock up. Treatment helped me. I began to recover fast. My co-detainees in the cell supported me to be able to walk.

Q: Why were you kept in custody for so long after Shyam Sunder admitted to you that your torture had been unnecessary?

A: I had been tortured severely. They were not sure that I will overcome my injuries to live. If I had succumbed, an encounter would have been faked to explain away my death.

Q: You managed to smuggle out a letter from the custody. The letter addressed to your mother was postmarked 23rd of April. How did you manage to get this letter written and posted?

A: I cannot tell you about those who helped me in this. This would get them into trouble.

Q: Were you able to observe the conditions of your co-detainees?

A: There were eighteen detainees in the lock up when I got there. They had all been picked up in the same manner as myself, and had suffered the same fate.

Q: Do you know their names? A: I know five or six names. One was Kulwant Singh. He has been in illegal custody for more than two months. He was abducted from his village Mohan in Ferozepur district.

Q: Is he still in the lock up?

A: Yes he was when I left. There was another man, Balvinder Singh from Fatehgarh. He used to be a driver in Calcutta. He had gone to Talwandi Sabo (a historically important Gurdwara near Talwandi) on the occasion of Baisakhi from where he was picked up. One 14 year old boy who was known just by his nick name, Kale, was also there. He too had been picked up from Talwandi Sabo. The boy comes from Goniyala village near Bhatinda. He has suffered severe torture. Then there is a boy from Bagha Purana village near Moga. His name is Jarnail Singh. He has been in custody for the last eight months. He has neither been produced before a magistrate nor detained under any special law.

Q: How old is he?

A: Must be around 19.

Q: Who else?

A: Gurbaj Singh from Taran Taran and another boy Geja, also from Taran Taran. Both have been in custody for the last two months. Geja's associate Manjit Singh was taken out and killed in a faked encounter the day after I was brought to the lock up.

Q: How many more detainees did you see taken out of the lock up to be killed?

A: One or two detainees almost every day.

Q: How do you know that they were killed?

A: Those marked for elimination got segregated from the rest of us. They used to be taken out at nights.

Q: Are you a witness to torture of other detainees in the custody of CIA Faridkot?

A: Yes, after about twenty five days of illegal arrest when I was able to walk a little, I was asked to tend buffaloes which belonged to Inspector Shyam Sunder. I had to wash, and feed them.

Q: You mean that buffaloes were tended right inside the police station?

A: Yes, they were. One day when I was washing the buffaloes I witnessed two detainees being tortured. Hot iron rods were being incised into their calf muscles. They were screaming themselves to death. I got scared and hid myself in the lock up.

Q: Do you know their names?

A: No. I don't know. I dared not inquire.

Q: At what time yesterday did you come to know that you were going to be released?

A: I was in the lock up and had no idea that I might be released. At about 12 noon, two constables came to the lock up and informed me that my mother was waiting at the police station. I thought she must have come to request the officers for an interview. The constables went away and came back after some time. They told me that I was about to be released. They asked me how much money I would give them if I was released. I thought they were joking. When they asked me if I would give them fifty rupees in case I was released, I readily agreed. Some time after I was taken out of the lock up and actually allowed to leave the police station along with my mother. Before leaving the police station I was warned that if I talked to anyone about my arrest or torture, or made complaints before a court of law, my entire family would be eliminated. SSP Govind Ram has given the same warning to my mother when she met him in the morning. Iqbal Singh did nevertheless talk. Threats and terror beyond a certain point can lead to a state of resignation to "come what may".