Mar
28
Law to prevent prosecution for police abuses
March 28, 2006 | 1 Comment
The Punjab government is preparing a proposal for a law to protect police officers and militants who cooperated with them from prosecution. Finance Minister Surinder Singla said on March 21 that Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh would soon announce the procedure to protect officers who used extra-judicial methods in the name of countering terrorism.
The FM and the DGP said extra-ordinary circumstances required extra-ordinary steps to combat it, “The law did not provide the measures and now the police would be armed with some kind of protection against the law.”
However, the police already enjoy substantial legal protection from prosecution for abuses. The judiciary has largely ignored police abuses and reinforced police impunity by delaying cases or dismissing petitions based on police versions of events. A Judicial Blackout: Judicial Impunity for Disappearances in Punjab, India examines cases in which the the judiciary ignored police abuses such as faked encounters and extrajudicial executions.
In related news, Director General of Punjab Police SS Virk, who has been implicated in cases of human rights abuses, received a presidential medal.
The Finance Minister also awarded medals to police officers; SS Virk received the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service.
A recent article in Outlook India by Rajinder Puri argues that if the Indian government wants to reform its justice system, it must start telling the truth regardless of officials’ getting exposed. Puri states that rewarding police for killing militants led to corruption and abuse by police. The police policy of falsely declaring dead cooperative militants is one example of a policy that police exploited for their personal gain.
The defence put up by Mr Gill and Mr Virk appears exceedingly weak – in the context of gallantry awards and financial rewards collected by police officers responsible for the “slain” terrorists. Terrorists who are in fact leading comfortable lives! Would Mr Virk like to enlighten us also on whether these awards were in the national interest?
Their practice of having police officers infiltrate the ranks of militants also created problems as:
“trusted” police officers had built “their own armies of cats – of men drawn from the fold of terrorists – besides a team of ruthless and tough officers for all anti-terrorist operations in their respective areas”.
Puri continues to point out that in Amritsar district alone, at least 2,097 civilians were killed by the Punjab police and secretly cremated. Many of these disappeared were found to have had no links to terrorism.
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