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Yes, we killed, we faked. Top
Indian cops tell it all
New Delhi shuts
eyes, civil society turns deaf and dumb
WSN Bureau
 AMRITSAR: At a time when the world is increasingly getting sensitized to
the human right situation across the globe and strong voices are
emerging from within the United States civil society against even
the Bush administration on the issue of continuing engagement of
American troops in Iraq, in India the situation is exactly the
opposite. The apologists of the Indian regime and top-shot police
officers who have been valorized by official India are publicly
taking a stance that the federal regime had backed them in illegal
killings of Sikh youth and there should be now no move to book any
of these killers.
The argument:
This was all in the interest of India. Killing
Sikh youth by getting surrendered militants to identify them and
then obliterating their identities and using them to encroach upon
other people's lands and properties should be retrospectively
considered legal.
Punjab's shame
and India's so called super cop, K.P.S Gill, has now said that the
Indian government should not bother about the strategy of police
having some domestic 'Cats'. It may be recalled that police officers
like Gill and former Punjab DGP Sarabdeep Singh Virk were the
pioneers in the concept of 'Cats'. Any militants who would turn
renegades would be illegally used by the police as spotters for
other militants. Now, Virk is facing the heat as he has fallen foul
of the
Punjab
government of Parkash Singh Badal, itself no great savior of the
Sikhs or the Sikh thought. Virk was perceived close to the Amarinder
Singh regime and is being made to pay for that proximity, but the
fact remains that the confrontation has brought to the fore the
truth of
India's strategy to deal with what it called terrorism. In plain
words, it was state terrorism.
Now, Gill has
come forward to defend his old time crony, and his strategy is to be
more blatant. At a function of Hind Samachar group of papers in
Jalandhar in India, Gill said
when the going got tough all sorts of strategies were followed "in
the larger interest of the country". The Indian media dutifully
reported Gill's comments (See The Tribune of Sep 17 or any other
paper for that matter) without commenting or even editorializing
with perspective what India's convicted-for-moral-turpitude 'hero'
was really saying.
Gill in fact
said that the police not only used Cats, "but also rats, bats,
camels and the ilk.” His statement was clearly designed to fudge the
issue and rather ridicule the entire construct of the human rights.
"We were given a free hand as there was no other way of stamping out
terrorism in Punjab.
Since the other arms of the state were paralyzed, it fell on the men
in uniform to take upon them to do their duty, even at the cost of
their lives," KPS Gill said.
So there the
Sikh community has it. India's top cops are telling it that they
were armed by the nod from New Delhi to go ahead and kill innocent
Sikh youth in fake encounters, pour tomato ketchup on Cats, click
them lying down, show them as 'dead' and then harbor these Cats for
another day, perhaps to loot other people's properties. This is now
what Virk is accused of. The then CM Amarinder Singh is already on
record about the use of tomato ketchup, and Virk is on record about
the use of Cats and fake encounters. Now, KPS Gill is confirming
each one of these averments, and Indian civil society has turned
deaf and dumb, India's
media has its tail between its legs and official India
has its eyes wide shut.
On the case
regarding use of Cats against Virk, KPS Gill said “Such actions will
only demoralize the men already combating terrorism in the country.
It will also act as the sword of Damocles for those who have
retired.” Clearly, men like Gill want the Indian government to
legalize the killings retrospectively. New Delhi
is doing even better by shutting its eyes.
“You will see
that the case will not pass muster,” KPS Gill said. We already know.
Parkash Singh Badal's interest in the matter is not spurred by any
concern for the Sikh quom, and the Indian government does not lose
any sleep because its police officers are killing innocents in fake
encounters, giving a boost to the tomato ketchup industry.
20
September, 2007
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