{"id":77,"date":"2005-09-07T04:49:19","date_gmt":"2005-09-07T08:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2005\/09\/07\/recent-punjab-developments\/"},"modified":"2005-09-07T04:49:19","modified_gmt":"2005-09-07T08:49:19","slug":"recent-punjab-developments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2005\/09\/07\/recent-punjab-developments\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Punjab Developments"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Another case of torture in Punjab has come to light.  <\/SPAN>Raghubir Singh claims he was <\/FONT>tortured<\/FONT><\/A> <\/SPAN>and implicated in a false case because he refused to pay the police an extortion fee for settling a matrimonial dispute:<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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“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.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/EM><\/SPAN><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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Today, the Chief Minister of Punjab released 14 <\/FONT>guidelines<\/FONT><\/A> aimed at curbing custodial abuse:<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P>
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“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…<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/EM><\/SPAN><\/P>
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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.<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/EM><\/SPAN><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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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. <\/SPAN>The 2004 Department of State Country Report on Human Rights Practices<\/I> in India<\/A> confirms that custodial torture is routine:<\/SPAN><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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. . . [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.  <\/SPAN>Although police officers were subject to prosecution for such offences under the Penal Code, the Government often failed to hold them accountable.  <\/SPAN>According to AI [Amnesty International], torture usually took place during criminal investigations.  <\/SPAN>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.<\/EM> <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P>
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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.  <\/SPAN>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.  <\/SPAN><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P>
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Earlier this week:<\/FONT><\/P>
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