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Minor theft leads to major
expose on bloody face
of Punjab Police
WSN Bureau
CHANDIGARH: It
was sensational not only because the police had tumbled on a cache
of arms in the home of a retired police officer while investigating
a complaint of theft against a poor servant lodged by the cop
himself, but because all these arms and ammunition had fallen into
his hands at a time when Punjab Police officers were having a free
run killing Sikh youth in fake encounters and claiming huge rewards
besides promotions.
Many a blood soaked promotions used to follow after press
conferences announcing killings, and later years have already seen
that many of the so-called killed militants were in fact alive while
cops had passed off bodies of perfectly innocent civilians after
kidnapping and killing them because encashment of corpses was easy
in Punjab for nearly a decade.
The large cache of arms and ammunition was recovered from the house
of Surinder Singh Atwal, a retired SP of Punjab Police, in Sector 15
in Chandigarh. Atwal had served as SP (Operations) at Hoshiarpur
during the days of terrorism. He has now been arrested and remanded
to judicial custody for 14 days. The hand of the Indian state is
clearly visible even now, otherwise who gets to escape police
interrogation if cache of arms is found from one's house.
Atwal had reported a theft in his house and suspected that a Home
Guard jawan deployed for his security was the culprit. The jawan,
Ram Lal, was arrested that morning and he told the police about
weapons hidden in Atwal's house. The cops swooped down upon the
house and recovered the arms and ammunition that comprised 1,351
cartridges of AK-47, seven empty magazines of AK-47, a .38-bore
revolver and its 18 cartridges, empty drum (magazine) of AK 47, 96
cartridges of SLR.
As an icing on the cake, here is Atwal's justification for the arms.
He said he had recovered arms during the days of militancy and had
kept these as he perceived threat to his life. Over to the Indian
state. After judicial custody, what next? May be a new identity and
a life in the United States?
23 April 2008
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