Author: K P S Gill
Publication: Sify.com
Date: December 10, 2002
When one talks of human rights vis-a-vis
the police administration, there are two situations.
One is the ordinary situation of
maintaining law and order, where the major allegations about the police
have been those of torture, deaths in police custody etc. In some places
there is also talk of fake encounters with criminals.
When you are dealing with a normal
situation, there is no question of tolerating violations of human rights.
No leeway should be given to the police administration.
The other is the extra-ordinary
situation prevailing out of terrorism, which the police is called upon
to counter.
In the second situation, the judgement
has to be qualified by the police's role in a situation where not only
have they to face the terrorists' bullets but also face the nexus between
some of the terrorist orgnisations and the so-called human rights groups.
Terrorism does not recognise the
normal conventions of politics and democracy, and cannot be countered by
these. It is a completely immoral and unconstrained use of force and can
only be countered by the use of force.
During my tenure in Punjab, I found
that some of the NGOs or even media organisations were actually front offices
for terrorist groups.
In some instances, I have found
within a half an hour of an encounter, these NGOs would come out with their
own version of the encounter.
Unquestionably, there was a nexus
between some of the terrorist outfits parading as NGOs and human rights
group. It took us some time to decipher this nexus.
In certain areas of our country,
newspapers themselves are fronts for dubious outfits. This makes the task
of the police extremely complicated.
The terrorist groups have long since
shifted their strategy of just relying in use of force. They now create
over-ground fronts and political organisations to spearhead their immediate
campaigns.
Their strategy is to build up substantial
public opinion through a variety of human rights fora and sustained litigation
against the most visible symbols of the state.
Some of the human rights organisations
are great experts in manipulating the media. They are very clever to use
the existing laws to pillory the police.
There is a human rights industry
in India that comprises unscrupulous elements who abuse the processes of
the law, bear false witness, and fabricate evidence.
After the police officers and men
of the Punjab police gave their lives to bring the Punjab situation to
normal, and after there was widespread rejection of the people of the terrorism
in Punjab, the human groups came out with what I call the `litigation weapon.`
The law went over backwards to implicate
the officers who fought terrorism through the worst period that Punjab
experienced, with the flimsiest of evidence.
Unfortunately, some very unfortunate
statements were made by judges in the Supreme Court. And, some of it was
done with an eye on publicity.
The very people who fought terrorism,
by a perverse twist of the law of the land were out to be the villains
of the nation.
And, some of the people, important
functionaries, who supported terrorism with all their means, are today
enjoying the patronage of the state.
In Punjab, after the situation was
normalised, there were many individuals and organisations who used the
allegations of police excesses as a plank for polls, as an election strategy.
However, today, they stand utterly
exposed. In the ensuing elections and in the last two Parliamentary and
Assembly elections, every single one of them who stood for elections on
a human rights platform have lost their deposits.
Had their allegations even a grain
of truth about rampant violation of human rights by the Punjab police,
the common man of Punjab would have voted en masse to empower these individuals
to right the alleged wrongs.
I feel vindicated by the people.
I have, as I have said, to join issues with the way the judiciary has treated
the police. It has been shabby and most of the time at the instigation
of the Human Right groups.
In Jammu and Kashmir, which is an
area severely disturbed by terrorism, in nearly 14 years of strife there
have been just 13 convictions in cases related to terrorism.
This is when more than 30,750 people
have been killed in the conflict between 1988 and 2001, 11,377 of them
civilians.
The problem with the Human Rights
groups is that they do not care, or simply do not understand the roots
of the society. They are urbanised and elitist, they simply have no idea
of the realities in the villages.
In Punjab, when the Human Rights
groups used to come to me complaining of police excesses, I used to invite
them to come with us into the villages and tell them `we will show you
what is happening.`
But not one of them came. I made
a standing invitation that any human right group was free to accompany
our forces for any operation and they can be the judges of what is happening
on the ground.
In a normal situation the key to
making the police more sensitive to civil rights and human rights is to
make the police stations absolutely professional in their functioning.
This would involve, training, re-training
of the personnel, give them the infrastructure for them to do their work,
the motivation to be true to the public, etc. This is easier said than
done.
But the most important aspect of
the improvement of the police force is to ensure that the police is totally
taken out of the grasp of political manipulations and throw the frequent
transfers of policemen out of the window.
In my opinion, this one step will
ensure that the police force is more sensitive to human rights and civil
liberties; when a man knows that he is going to be in a place for a three-year
tenure he has a stake in the society.
He cannot, as it were, shoot and
scoot. He has to face the consequences of his action. This will ensure
that he will be more sensitive to the society's emotions.
Living among those people will itself
be a pressure on him militating against wrong action on his part.
(K P S Gill is best known for restoring
the militancy torn Punjab back to normalcy as the DGP of the Punjab police.
His exploits in Punjab have earned him the sobriquet of the 'super cop'.
)
As told to E Jayakrishnan
