Torture Methods of Punjab Police

Deadly facts about torture during interrogation in Punjab have come alive in a study on custodial deaths by the Institute of Correctional Administration. As many as 50 per cent of the police officials talked to have admitted that third degree methods are used against the suspects due to social and political pressures.

The study, carried out by the institute’s deputy director Dr Upneet Lalli, has further revealed that need for conducting speedy investigation is another reason. “There is a pressure (on the cops) to perform as also pressure to conform”, the report says. For the purpose of the conducting the study, as many as 150 police officials were talked to.

The report adds: Lack of accountability and almost total immunity enjoyed by the police until recently accounts for the fact that 58 per cent of them feel there is no sense of shame in cops accused of torture. Only 27 per cent say their colleagues feel bad about the use of force to effect confession and recovery.

“There seems to be no clear cut message from the top about intolerance to torture as 18 per cent feel their seniors will feel bad. Another 27 per cent have opposite to say,” the report asserts. Just 10 per cent of the police personnel are aware of the guidelines issued by the National Human Rights Commission on custody-related issues. Only 12 per cent are correctly able to specify the Articles of the Constitution dealing with the matter, even though a majority of them are aware of the Supreme Court verdict in D.K. Basu versus State of West Bengal case.

The voluminous 200-page study “Custodial Deaths and Human Rights Commission - an analysis of its role and prevention” has already been submitted to the Punjab State Human Rights Commission. Quoting the contents of the report, the sources in the commission say just one-fourth of the officers talked to admit consultation with their seniors or the relevant rules in case of doubt about their powers.

As many as 90 per cent police personnel from the state and even outside agree to the need for adopting scientific methods of investigations against the hardened criminals. “The main kind of abuse a person faces in police custody has been mentioned as physical (41 per cent) and mental (67 per cent),” it adds. “The main reason behind deaths in police custody has been mentioned as torture, medical negligence and drug addiction”.

Panjab Police - Case Study

Torture of Shaheed Bhai Avtar Singh Ji

Avtar Singh, a candidate for the Punjab Assembly brutally tortured (with hot iron and electric shock) and murdered by the Indian Police. Another example of the barbaric behavior of Indian Security forces. This is the treatment Sikhs get in the so-called "largest democracy in the world." Bhai Avatar Singh Ji, pictured below had received the following barbaric treatment for being a Sikh :

• His abdomen was burnt by using a hot ironing-press.
• His right fore-arm was cut open.
• All the major bones in both of his arms were broken.
• Hot pinchers were used on his wrists to poke burn his skin.
• Hot Steel rods were used to burn the soles of his feet
  

This is just one case, of literally thousands. Amnesty International and other Human Rights Organizations have been crying out about these abuses for decades, while the Panjabi people like myself are living comfortably and whenever someone mentions a case of torture, or police brutality its taboo. We begin covering our ears, and try changing the subject.

These cases of torture are NOT a thing of the past, you just have to look at two recent detainee's Bhai Panjab Singh (UK) and Bhai Jagtar Singh Hawara. The only reason we hear about these cases of torture is because these people are 'high profile' Sikhs, many are still in jails since the 1980's WITHOUT TRIAL who are simply forgotten. Singhs still in prison for 20+ years, and if they are released they're just hounded constantly in their old age. By contrast in Africa, Nelson Mandela went to prison and became Prime Minister.

Sikh Women have suffered no less. They were raped and killed, there are cases were women were paraded naked infront of their dads. The husband was also forced to watch the rapes by the police.

The only way these things are going to stop, is if we realize as a community, or atleast accept these things are happening. How can a problem be solved, such a huge problem, if we dont even accept it exists?

Wake up, wake your families and friends up.

For you it's a short conversation, for another human being it could be freedom.

Feel free to forward, circulate or cut any part of this post.

15 Year old Harpreet Murdered over a photo

By mid-1992, the Indian Police in Punjab had lost all sense of morality and considered human rights to be a joke. On June 25, 1992, 15-year-old Harpreet Kaur RaNo was stopped while riding her bicycle in Amritsar’s Ghio Mandi.

Harpreet Kaur was very interested in the Sikh struggle and used to consider the Sikh fighters her brothers. When the newspaper would print a notice about the Shahidi and bhog of a Sikh fighter, she would cut out their picture and keep it in her purse.

The police decided to search her purse. When the pictures were found, the excuse to arrest this young Sikh girl was found and she was taken directly to the famous torture center at BR Model School in Amritsar. She was put in the custody of Thanedar Darshan Lal who punished Harpreet Kaur for her “crime”. In that dark torture center, only Vahiguru knows what suffering and brutality Harpreet Kaur faced.

Despite her family’s best efforts to free her, the newspapers reported that Harpreet Kaur along with 3 other “terrorists” had been killed on June 27, 1992 near Sultanvind. Her body was not given to the family. The family went to the cremation grounds at Durgiana Mandir and in one pile of ashes, Harpreet Kaur’s sister recognized a kaRa. The two sisters used to wear identical KaRas and the ashes were recognized as Harpreet Kaur’s. No justice was ever expected or delivered for this cold-blooded murder.

Example of Fake Police Encounter

As far as nearly everyone knew, Gurnam Singh Bandala was gunned down in a shootout with police 13 years ago during the waning days of an uprising by Sikh separatists.

That is, until Bandala turned up alive, living as a preacher outside this northern Indian city.

"It's the perfect cover, being dead," says Bandala, the classic image of a towering Sikh with his white robe, deep blue turban and long gray beard.

Authorities now believe an innocent farmer was deliberately killed by police so that they could present his body as Bandala's and collect a $60,000 bounty.

"I thought I was so lucky," Bandala told The Associated Press in an interview. But "there was no luck. There was murder."

Bandala's re-emergence is one of nearly a dozen similar cases reviewed by the AP that have surfaced recently in India. The faked police shootouts have shaken an already troubled justice system in a country that touts itself as a rights-respecting democracy where the rule of law prevails.

Former police officials and human rights activists say the fake encounters are the brutal result of a system dominated by poorly educated, badly trained and corruptible cops, dirty politicians and stagnated courts where justice, if it ever comes, can be delayed for years.

"Because cases take years to be settled, because witnesses don't show up, because bribes are paid, criminals get away. So the police resort to shortcuts," says Sankar Sen, a former policeman who's now a fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences in New Delhi.

The exact number of fake encounters is impossible to determine. Police officials acknowledge only a handful over the past two decades and say they are isolated cases.

But the former and current officers say the problem is more widespread, and rights activists estimated the number must be in the hundreds, if not thousands.

They point to the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared, many after being detained by police during one of the myriad insurgencies here in the last three decades. An estimated 3,000 people were lost without explanation during the Sikh uprising in Punjab in the 1980s and early 1990s. About 10,000 are missing in Kashmir, where an Islamic rebellion festers today.

In Punjab, the fight for a separate Sikh state left about 25,000 people dead, including 1,700 police. Bandala is one of three former separatist militants who were said to have been killed in shootouts but who recently turned up alive.

"Somebody was killed in their place," says Ranjan Lakhanpal, a human rights lawyer. "We believe there are many more."

In Kashmir, a Himalayan region wracked by an Islamic rebellion since 1989, police this year began investigating five cases, all involving security forces who may have killed innocents and claimed they were rebels to earn rewards.

And in Gujarat, a western state riven by tensions between Hindus and Muslims, three policemen and three senior officials have been arrested for their alleged role in the 2005 slaying of a Muslim couple. Authorities earlier had said the husband was part of a plot by Islamic militants to kill the state's top elected official, a Hindu nationalist.

However, the Kashmir and Gujarat probes are exceptions and most allegations never are fully checked, says Ajai Sahni, former chief of India's Intelligence Bureau, part of the country's law-enforcement apparatus. "They're the result of dogged investigations by good policemen. That rarely happens."

One reason few cases are investigated is that most Indians aren't interested. Wealthier Indians in particular have long accepted extrajudicial killings disguised as shootouts as the most expedient way to get rid of criminals.

There's even a reverential term for officers with the highest tallies: "encounter specialists."

"There is pressure from politicians, there is pressure from the public," says Sen, the former policeman. "They wat criminals eliminated, they cheer it."

Sen spent 35 years with the police, eventually running the National Police Academy before leaving the force to head the government's National Human Rights Commission.

He says that when he was a top officer years ago in the eastern state of Orissa, a politician, whom he won't name, told him to kill a troublesome bandit.

Sen says he refused, "but other policemen were more cooperative." The bandit was slain.

Police kill not only career criminals, but also stage shootouts to get promotions or rewards. That was the case with Bandala.

Bandala already was in hiding for a decade when he read, in July 1994, about his own death in a local newspaper. He worried at first, "then I realized the police wouldn't be chasing me anymore," he said.

At the same time, a woman who lived a few villages over would start looking for her husband, Sukhpal Singh.

According to court documents filed by Singh's family, police came to their home in August and picked up the farmer, then 26, for questioning.

"He disappeared like a ghost," says his widow, Dalbir Kaur. "We've never seen him again."

When Kaur and her mother-in-law went looking for Singh, the police who took him said he'd been transferred to another station. So they went there only to be told he'd been sent back to the first.

It went on and on. Months stretched into years. Singh's mother died and his family sold their small farm to pay for lawyers who are seeking $12,500 in a wrongful death suit.

Authorities have never told them what happened to Singh. But a senior Punjab police officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains sensitive, said authorities believe Singh was killed in Bandala's place. His body was presented as that of Bandala's and then cremated in accordance with Sikh custom.

Asked what happened to the two officers who were first credited with the killing _ and claimed the reward _ he said one, Jaspal Singh, a former deputy superintendent of police, is in jail, convicted of torturing and murdering a human rights activist. The other, Paramraj Singh Umrananagal, is now a senior Punjab police officer. He refused to speak about the case.

Bandala, meanwhile, was caught by police in 1998 and spent four years in prison on charges of carrying illegal weapons. He was convicted under his real name, but the public record _ which lists Bandala as deceased _ was never changed.

"Nobody likes to be embarrassed," the official said.

Rawalpindi: Police beat Mohammad Bin Masood who was protesting against the disappearance of his father