Experiences Of Lawyers

Police Harassment

After the police killed or kidnapped four human rights lawyers, the Supreme Court granted security to seventeen advocates of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.[117] The four lawyers were Kulwant Singh, whose case I discussed above; Ranbir Singh Mansahia, an advocate from Bathinda; Jagwinder Singh, an advocate from Kapurthala; and Sukhwinder Singh Bhatti, an advocate from Sangrur.

Lower court lawyers experienced frequent detentions, harassing phone calls, and even attacks in open court. Many lawyers received anticipatory bail to counter the illegal detentions. Brjinder Singh Sodhi, a district court lawyer in Patiala and the main lawyer handling the CBI cases, was attacked in open court. The police told him that he would suffer the same fate as the murdered lawyers and that he should stop appearing in court. As Sodhi told me, Judge Amarjit Singh Virk heard this and did nothing.

Ranjan Lakhanpal, one of my interviewees, alleged that the police murdered his son. He was handling several cases against Superintendent of Police Pritpal Singh Virk. Virk used to pressure Lakhanpal through various people, by having police officials try to crash into him while he was driving, harassing him over the phone, and even encouraging judges and other government officials privately to push Lakhanpal into withdrawing human rights cases. In one case, Lakhanpal received an inquiry report against Virk, and the case was registered for the next day: “So one day before the hearing, he got my son knocked down. By a car, outside the house. He was ten years old. I have a case registered against him, and it is pending in the High Court.”[118]

Harjinder S. Dhami described the frequent raids on his house and threats made to his family, highlighting the psychological impact of police harassment:

I have kids and a wife. One time I came home and my mom said that today the police came here and asked where the kids go to school .... I know these are all pressure tactics, so I told them not to worry. If they really wanted to know where the kids go to school, they could have found out easily. These are just scare tactics. But once in the house the mother finds out that they’re asking for the kids, and in the entire village there’s a big ruckus, then psychologically what is the health like?.....150 people used to raid our house. 150 people. We were just fighting human rights violations. Yet I had to get anticipatory bail three or four times. The raids happened so many times, I can’t even count.[119]

Navkiran Singh’s case illustrates how even lawyers sometimes choose not to prosecute their abusers. The police attacked Singh, who initiated the petition for security for these lawyers, as he was leaving court in 1991. According to my interview with Singh, they shot at his car, eventually catching him, removing his turban, dragging him by his hair and beating him. They kept him in illegal detention for a few hours. Singh, however, decided not to pursue a case against Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Sumed S. Saini in order to avoid further danger.

Relationships With Other Judicial Actors

The High Court lawyers who have represented petitioners in habeas corpus petitions all claimed that fellow lawyers labeled them as communal, terrorists, or anti-national. A. S. Chahal, who started human rights work in 1978, stated, “The Sikh lawyers avoided us a bit because they didn’t want to be labeled as terrorists either. The other lawyers hated us. They openly said we are terrorists, anti-national.”[120] Although the entire Bar Association united to strike against the High Court’s treatment of the Kulwant Singh case for two months, R. S. Bains criticized the Bar Association’s intentions. The majority of lawyers generally followed the leadership of six lawyers in protest only because “they felt it is too shameless not to protest even such a heinous act.” Outraged by their indifference, Bains described the protest as a “bulldoze strike.”[121] Lawyers such as Ranjan Lakhanpal also cited unofficial communications from judges discouraging them from pursuing these cases because of religious bias and the challenge these cases posed to the government.