Editorial

Justice grinds too Little and too Late
Murder of Human Right Activist Jaswant Singh Khalra

IT is an ugly truth that Indian criminal justice system grinds little and if at all it grinds, it produces small. Indian courts have piled up over 30 million cases, a good portion of them being criminal cases. The pendency rate may be one of the highest among the civilised nations. The old adage, justice delayed is justice denied neither worries the public authority nor the courts except making some pious noises here and then. Anyone who enters the hallowed portal of the courts is bound to repent. They are likened to mortuaries.

Punjab is currently witness to one such quirk of justice.

In 1995, Jaswant Singh Khalra,  a lawyer and human right activist  had nearly single handedly  collected strong evidence about the disappearance of 2,097 youth who were reportedly eliminated and cremated when Punjab was stuck by a ruthless brutality. It put the police in the dock. Here was a lawyer turned a passionate human right activist exposing the transgression by a malicious police. Khalra had meticulously collected the details from the cremation grounds’ registers and other sources like a hardnosed criminal lawyer. 

Within three days of Khalra going public in January 1995 with his evidence, the then police chief K.P.S.Gill issued a strong rebuttal and termed him as an Akali stooge and his whole evidence a bunch of lies. Soon Khalra was the target of abusive threats and on September 6, 1995 he was picked up from his Kabir Park residence in the holy city of Amritsar. He was tortured and ordered to disown all the evidence or face liquidation. He refused to budge despite days of suffering and finally the trigger happy cops just bumped him off as they had done with thousands of others. The law enforcers had really turned roller blind with the blood of the innocents at their hands.

Khalra had released the list of 2,097 youth who he alleged had disappeared courtesy Punjab police and his only fault was that in  January 1995, he had filed a petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court concerning the deaths of hundreds of unidentified individuals. He had produced records from cremation grounds in Amritsar district, showing how several hundred "unclaimed" bodies had been cremated during 1992 and alleged that many of these were individuals who had "disappeared" following their arrest by the police and whose fate was unknown. The court dismissed the petition on the grounds that the families of the "disappeared" individuals should themselves file petitions.

For his wife and associates when most of the Akali leaders had backed out, it was an uphill task. She knocked the doors of the Supreme Court which handed over the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation in November 1995. CBI filed a charge sheet in October 1996.  The trail could begin only in April 1998. The police was at an old game of delay till finally the High Court in August 2004 ordered to complete the trial in six months. The judgement came in 2005.

Thus when a Patiala court on November 18 , 2005 concluding a tormenting trial of over seven years awarded punishment  Punjab  six police officers,  Khalra’s widow Paramjit Kaur and her lawyers  could muster only , “ too little too late.” Deputy Superintendent Jaspal Singh and Assistant Sub Inspector Amarjeet Singh were to spend their lives in jail and four other officers, Suridnrpal Singh, Satnam Singh, Jasbir Singh and Pritpal Singh were sentenced to 7 years rigorous imprisonment. Both sides vowed to appeal to superior courts. Paramjit found the sentence too little and sought death penalty and p cops found aggrieved by the punishment. There are two superior courts; Punjab High Court and Supreme Court of India where the case would finally be fought. Perhaps another five years. Also, Gill’s name may figure again. Jaspal Singh had earlier been punished in another case, but only this year he was pardoned by the Governor on the recommendations of the Punjab cabinet. 

For Paramjit Kaur  and her team and more so for special police officer, Kuldip Singh, whose evidence was vital as the sole eye witness to kidnapping and torture, it has been traumatic time. The fight was long and often lonely, particularly for Kuldip. An ordinary farmer’s son with nearly no sources of income, he  has now lost his temporary job and is taken care of  by the Central Security Force whose ten jawans that guard him under court orders. He faces threat from the police officials now sentenced by the court. He alleges that no one bothers about his ruined life. He is a virtual prisoner and can not move around as a normal person. No one comes to his rescue and not even   from the Khalra Case Committee. He is a social outcaste and does not have any source of livelihood. Imagine the plight of a person who dared to speak the truth that finally nailed down the accused .he says, “If I had known my fate of a prisoner, I would have never opted as a witness. I am totally ruined. No friend or relations comes to me and these people from the Khalra Committee care too hoot.” 

How were these large scale killings and a disappearance of journalists and human right activists possible? One explanation is influential sections of the society provided them sanctions. One often then heard, not in subdued voices, but   in an open loud manner that these need to be ‘finished’. It was this attitude and collusion, conscious or otherwise, that emboldened the security forces to pick up persons they found inconvenient and bump them off in fake encounters. Many journalists often heard the police officers boast of these eliminations in private drink parties. The exact number of people the security forces killed in this manner or those who mysteriously disappeared after they were last seen with the police, would never be known.