Early Reports Of Extra Judicial Executions

The right to life and liberty of the people in Punjab has been under violation for a long time before Parliament amended the Constitution empowering the State to suspend them. Observers of developments in Punjab, in fact, see a close relationship between the escalation of separatist militancy and the steady augmentation of State violence outside the established procedure of law.

Kulwant Singh Nagoke

First there was the case of one Kulwant Singh Nagoke, a follower of Bhindranwale, who had been killed while in police custody for interrogation in the beginning of 1982. The story given out officially to explain his death baffled even the credulous. According to the story, a police head constable was taking him to a hospital f or medical check- up on the pillion of his bicycle without additional escort. The prisoner tried to escape and was shot at, resulting in his death. No one believed the story. Bhindranwale was immensely angered by this incident and swore to have such police officials who extra judicially executed his followers punished.

Central Reserve Police Force

Escalation of Sikh militancy brought about communal polarization not only of the population of Punjab but also of the State security forces. The Punjab police, a large number of its personnel being Sikhs, was seen as the fifth column in sympathy with Sikh separatists. The Central Reserve Police Force, which functioned under the authority of the Central government, epitomized the rage and the reaction of Hindu India against Sikh atrocities. The Force was deployed to teach the desperate lot a lesson. And lessons they were taught.

Killing of innocent persons by the CRPF during the funeral procession of Harbans Lal Khanna, Bharatiya Janata Party leader, assassinated allegedly by Sikh militants in April 1984 was the beginning of indiscrimination of State violence against Sikhs.

Hindu organizations had given the call for a bandh - shut down - in Amritsar as a token of anguish over the assassination. The CRPF took it upon itself to enforce the call. Many Sikhs did not close their shops. CRPF personnel ran amuck and rampaged the markets which were not shut down in empathy with Hindu anguish.

In a fruit shop, three Sikhs resisted the brigandage. They were shot dead. In another incident that occured the same day, a CRPF patrol stopped a group of four men who were coming to Amritsar from a village nearby. The group consisted of two brothers, Surinder Singh and Narinder Singh; their father, Mohinder Singh; and Kuldip Singh, their maternal uncle. Kuldip Singh was clean shaven and looked a Hindu while the rest were hirsute. The CRPF patrol let Kuldip Singh get away and shot down the rest. The government initially claimed that they were terrorists but later equivocated by explaining the incident as an instance of inadvertent excess. The next of kin of the victims were monetarily compensated. But the guilty officials remained unpunished. In early 1983, the President of the Akali Dal, Longowal, appointed a Committee to investigate the widespread reports that the police was killing Sikhs extrajudicially under the blinder of "armed encounters". Three prominent lawyers, GS. Grewal, who later became the Advocate General of the State; Manjit Singh Khera and Ajit Singh Sirhadi were on this Committee. They were able to examine eyewitnesses only in three cases of reported deaths in encounter. The Committee came to the conclusion that in all the three cases the encounters were faked and that the detainees had in fact been killed in State custody. All these instances precede the Operation Blue Star and the Delhi killings. Let us proceed to the nearer past.

Balwant Singh & Police

In December 1986 when the State was ruled by the elected government of the Akali Dal under Barnala, a Sikh youth in Shah Kot village which came within the Assembly constituency of Balwant Singh, the then finance minister, was killed by CRPF personnel. Balwant Singh prevailed on the police administration to register a case of culpable homicide against the officers responsible. Though the case was registered there was no follow up. The initiative taken by Balwant Singh in this case brought about a rift between the police administration which functioned under the supervision of the Union Home Ministry and the elected government of the State, culminating into the latter's dismissal by the President of India in May 1987. Dismissal of the government was preceded by ink slinging between the Finance Minister and Mr. Rebeiro, the Director General of Police of Punjab, an iron fist appointee of the Prime Minister. Balwant Singh criticized the police chief for being cavalier with the press in making statements derogatory to the elected government and for upholding an extrajudicial approach to tackle Silk militancy. Rebeiro charged the ministers and legislators of the Akali Dal of harbouring terrorists.

PHRO Report

In August 1987, the Punjab Human Rights Organization released a report on its inquiries into the allegations of killings of Sikh detainees in the State custody. According to the findings of the organisation, seventy three persons in police custody had been killed in the district of Amritsar alone within a period of little more than three months between May 12 and August 22, 1987. All these killings had been explained away as deaths in armed encounters between militants and the security forces.

The Punjab Human Rights Organisation also released the list of people killed giving their names, the dates and places of their actual arrest and the dates and locations when and where they were alleged to have died in encounters with the security forces. While releasing the report to the press at Chandigarh, Justice A.S. Bains, a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the Chairman of the organisation, claimed that he knew at least two cases in which persons who had written complaints to the senior police officers about extrajudicial execution of their relatives were themselves killed in faked encounters.