Bundala fake encounter case finality in high court calls for probe in all fake encounters

Bundala fake encounter case finality in high court calls for probe in all fake encounters

Ground Zero

Jagtar Singh

 

More than 41 years after Akhand Kirtani Jatha activist Bhai Kulwant Singh Nagoke from Nagoke group in Amritsar district was shown to have been killed, it has now been proved with finality that the police had been resorting to killings in fake encounter. This calls for broader probe headed by a retired high court judge into what can be termed as strategy of fake encounters to counter militancy in Punjab that was triggered as revenge killings but got transformed as instrument of political struggle for Khalistan.

Not that it is for the first time that such a revelation has come out. The main point here is that this is an admission that has come on the record in the Punjab and Haryana Court exposing the dark underbelly of the methods used by the security forces to what is claimed to be the restoration of peace. Of course, police officials have earlier been convicted in killings in fake encounters.

This particular case is that of Sikh militant activist Gurbam Singh Bundala who was shown to have been killed in an encounter by the Punjab police. However, he was alive and surfaced years later. An innocent young man was detained and killed and cremated as Bundala.

The person who was actually shot was one Sukhpal Singh from Kala Afghana in Gurdaspur district in 1994 whose family pursued the case to the logical conclusion.

The confession is in the form of SIT report constituted on the orders of the high court in 2013 that concluded that the encounter in which Sukhpal Singh was killed as Bundala was staged managed. Director General of Police Gurpreet Deo who headed the SIT has stated in the affidavit in the high court: “During the investigation of case FIR number 63 dated July 29, 1994, and lodged at Morinda police station, it was found that the said police encounter in the case is staged managed and the FIR has been registered by falsifying facts.” (The Tribune, December 10, 2023).

The first such admission but not in the court had surfaced in 1987 when militancy was peaking and hence this confession remained overlooked. The person who admitted to killings in fake encounter was Amritsar senior superintendent of police Mohammad Izhar Alam while addressing Lok Shakti conclave at Patti in October, 1987 who was quoted as saying, “Terrorists who had committed five or more murders were killed by the police  after they were caught. He justified such actions on the logic that the police had to resort to  killing of terrorists  as there was remote possibility of their being punished by the law in the absence of evidence against them”. (Jagtar Singh, Khalistan Struggle: A Non-movement, Aakar, Delhi, 2011, p. 300; Cit. The Tribune, October 2, 1987).

The National Human Rights Commission in October 2006 awarded compensation in the case of cremation of more than 1000 “unidentified” bodies. The cremation of such bodies by the police had been exposed in the probe by human rights activists Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon in three cremation grounds in Amritsar district.

According to one estimate based upon ground work by human rights organizations, there could be more than 8000 such killings in fake encounters.

Going by the present situation when Khalistan struggle has resurfaced  and is impacting India’s geo-political relations in the context of Canada and USA, it is clear that the bullets failed to kill this idea at the political level. There are no bullets but these activists overseas are talking of ballots. The idea is alive at the level of the Sikh Diaspora but has few takers in Punjab.

With the admission in the high court, it is time that a high level judicial probe is ordered not just into the phenomenon of fake encounters from also the killings of the innocents.

The country must be told the reasons for the storming of the Golden Temple (Darbar Sahib) on June 3, 1984. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her two Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984 to avenge this action, such was the hurt in the Sikh community. About 1000 innocent men, women and children were killed by the security forces in Operation Bluestar, the code name for this action, besides Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and about 200 of armed activists associated with him.

It may be recalled that the Shiromani Akali Dal before 1997 had promised such probe but backed out after coming into power.

The probe should include every aspect of rise of Sikh militancy as the Bharatiya Janata Party used to target the Congress on some issues, including the rise of Sant Bhindranwale. In case the allegations then levelled by the BJP had some substance, the Congress would get nailed on this major issue.

It is time for Narendra Modi government to order a comprehensive high level judicial probe to bring out the facts, including the strategy of fake encounters.