Sep
7
Recent Punjab Developments
September 7, 2005 | Comments Off on Recent Punjab Developments
Another case of torture in Punjab has come to light. Raghubir Singh claims he was tortured and implicated in a false case because he refused to pay the police an extortion fee for settling a matrimonial dispute:
“Manvir sided with my wife throughout. He abused me and then the police locked me in a dark room for hours. In the evening at around 8 p.m., an ASI, Ramesh Kumar, and Head Constable Rajinder Singh dragged me out of the room to an open ground. There they pulled my beard, hair and slapped me repeatedly. Nobody paid any attention to my screams. Then Ramesh Kumar asked me to bend forward with my hands on the ground. Rajinder Singh stood on both my hands and Ramesh Kumar, who had fetched a leather belt, started hitting me on my back. They both kept on torturing me for one hour and then dragged me all over the ground,” Raghubir alleged.
Today, the Chief Minister of Punjab released 14 guidelines aimed at curbing custodial abuse:
“Some police officers still have the trigger-happy mindset of the days of Sikh terrorism and this needs to be curbed,” Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said while releasing the set of 14 guidelines…
Amarinder Singh said though Punjab Police was a disciplined force, there had been recent incidents in which officers had acted in an extra-legal manner that had embarrassed the state government.
Despite Chief Minister Singh’s assessment of the Punjab police as a disciplined force, regular reports have surfaced in the media and human rights reports regarding cases of custodial torture and death. The 2004 Department of State Country Report on Human Rights Practices in India confirms that custodial torture is routine:
. . . [A]uthorities often used torture during interrogations and exhorted money as summary punishment….The prevalence of torture by police in detention facilities throughout the country was reflected in the number of cases of deaths in police custody. . . . In addition, police commonly tortured detainees during custodial interrogation. Although police officers were subject to prosecution for such offences under the Penal Code, the Government often failed to hold them accountable. According to AI [Amnesty International], torture usually took place during criminal investigations. Police routinely resorted to arbitrary and incommunicado detention, denied detainees access to lawyers and medical attention, and used torture or ill treatment to extract confessions.
This same report also confirms specific incidents of torture in Punjab, and notes that the Punjab Director General of Police received 17,000 human rights complaints in 2004 alone. Additionally, senior police officers responsible for the systematic abuses during the counter-insurgency movement of the 1980s and 1990s have subsequently been promoted and operate with impunity.
Earlier this week:
16 people, out of an estimated 60 people arrested since June 2005 on terrorism-related charges, were released without charge.
The Punjab State Human Rights Commission (PSHRC) has taken over the investigation into the Feburary 7 custodial death of Satnam Singh. The Commission normally uses its investigating team, comprised of police officers, but is apparently dissatisfied with their inquiry.
The police released Manjot Kaur from detention. According to Manjot Kaur’s family, the Punjab police abducted her from her house on July 26 but failed to acknowledge and register her arrest. The family tried to record a police report regarding the abduction, but the police refused to record the report. On July 27, the police announced to the press that they had arrested Manjot Kaur from a bus stand with explosives in her possession. Her arrest led to large protests.
Political party leader Simranjit Singh Mann was also released from Ludhiana Central Jail after 78 days.
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