“Jo Bole So Ni­hal” chant of Sat­want Singh and Ke­har Singh greet­ing each other and boldly host­ing the Sikh war cry rends the air in Ti­har in the early morn­ing hours of 6 Jan­u­ary 1989, while the jail in­mates were still sleep­ing, their fam­i­lies are wait­ing out­side the prison and Sikhs across the world were protest­ing and pray­ing. Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Kan­war Pal Singh re­counts the fi­nal hours of the Sikh mar­tyrs while re­view­ing the book ‘Black War­rant’ penned by Ti­har jail of­fi­cial Sunil Gupta.

THE CON­TEM­PO­RARY HIS­TORY OF TI­HAR JAIL RECORDS THAT SAT­WANT SINGH AND KE­HAR SINGH -THE ‘TWO SIKH MAR­TYRS’ as the com­mu­nity ex­tolled them, while on the scaf­fold chanted ‘Jo Bole So Ni­hal’, prior to em­brac­ing the gal­lows, be­fore the black cloth, was put on to cover their faces.

In true Sikh tra­di­tion, in the face of im­mi­nent death, ‘Jo Bole So Ni­hal!’ was chanted re­calls Ti­har jailer Sunil Gupta in his book Black War­rant, co-au­thored with se­nior jour­nal­ist Sune­tra Chaud­hury, which de­tails the fi­nal min­utes of the duo ac­cused in the In­dira Gandhi as­sas­si­na­tion case.

In the 35 years of his ca­reer in Ti­har, Sunil Gupta wit­nessed hang­ing of Billa and Ranga in 1982, Maq­bool Butt in 1984, Kar­tar Singh and Uja­gar Singh in 1985, Sat­want Singh and Ke­har Singh in 1989 and Afzal Guru in 2013.

The ‘Jo Bole So Ni­hal’ chanted by Sat­want Singh Ke­har Singh con­tin­ues to re­ver­ber­ate in the com­mu­nity to this day as the com­mu­nity cher­ishes their mar­tyr­dom.

In De­cem­ber 1984, Ti­har pre­pared it­self to re­ceive Ke­har Singh, Sat­want Singh and Bal­bir Singh to stand trial for the most high-pro­file case of the as­sas­si­na­tion of In­dira Gandhi- the then Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try.

In an un­prece­dented man­ner, for the first time in the his­tory of Ti­har, the jail au­thor­i­ties set up a court in­side the jail premises fol­low­ing a se­cu­rity as­sess­ment that the daily trans­port of the ac­cused of court ap­pear­ances was too much of a se­cu­rity threat for the gov­ern­ment to han­dle.

De­fence coun­sels P N Lekhi, R S Sodhi and Ram Jeth­malani ar­gued in the Supreme Court that a trial in­side Ti­har was the an­tithe­sis of an open trial but to no avail.

The court­room was set up in the jail su­per­in­ten­den­t’s of­fice in Jail No. 3. The ac­cused were brought from Jail 1 to Jail 3 by a van that fer­ried them back and forth. For the first time, there were bul­let­proof en­clo­sures for the Ad­di­tional Ses­sions Judge Ma­hesh Chan­dra, the wit­nesses and the ac­cused stand­ing trial.

“We have a long list of com­plaints against him (the judge), Kochchar told the jailer, “If he does­n’t give the rul­ing, we (read the state) want, then we will re­veal every­thing”.

Gupta writes that Judge Ma­hesh Chan­dra was deeply un­com­fort­able de­spite the bul­let­proof cor­don that was made es­pe­cially for him. Judge Ma­hesh Chan­dra was too scared. The jailer ad­mits that Judge was un­der con­sid­er­able pres­sure from var­i­ous quar­ters.

“When Sat­want Singh and Ke­har Singh com­plained in the court that they were kept in iso­la­tion and that they were mis­treated or even beaten (and they of­ten were), Judge Chan­dra would con­fer with us be­fore that hear­ing to dis­cuss what he was go­ing to ask us and what our ap­pro­pri­ate an­swers should be- ‘If I say this, then you should say that.”

How would the state choose a judge for a po­lit­i­cal case like this, as the state too was aware that the over­all ev­i­dence to hang Ke­har Singh and Bal­bir Singh, to say the least, was only flimsy?

Well, the book makes a star­tling rev­e­la­tion ex­pos­ing In­di­a’s jus­tice sys­tem. Quot­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sioner of Po­lice Ra­jen­dra Prasad Kochchar, Gupta re­veals that the judge Ma­hesh Chan­dra was cho­sen so that he would take the pros­e­cu­tion’s side and not bother too much about pro­pri­ety. “We have a long list of com­plaints against him (the judge), Kochchar told the jailer, “If he does­n’t give the rul­ing, we (read the state) want, then we will re­veal every­thing”.

‘I killed her, I don’t know why P N Lekhi is say­ing what he is, but I did kill her!’.

Cit­ing deep flaws in the In­dian crim­i­nal ju­rispru­dence sys­tem, Gupta ad­mits that the com­mon be­lief was that if the vic­tim had been any­one other than Mrs Gandhi, all the ac­cused would have been ac­quit­ted. This per­cep­tion was widely ad­mit­ted and dis­cussed through­out the Sikh world too.

The ev­i­dence against Ke­har Singh, in par­tic­u­lar, was noth­ing but a farce. One ma­jor rea­son, Sunil Gupta cites is that the main shooter Beant Singh was killed on the spot. With his death, the pri­mary source of the killer’s mo­ti­va­tion and de­tails of the as­sas­si­na­tion plot were lost. Fur­ther, the po­lice made his wife Bi­mal Kaur Khalsa their prime wit­ness so that she would sup­port their claims against Ke­har Singh. The au­thor has nar­rated that there were many as­pects of the case which were deeply er­ro­neous but the Supreme Court of In­dia failed to ac­knowl­edge them.

Gupta says that, from the day of his ar­rest, 22-year-old Sat­want Singh was very vi­o­lent and would lash out and in­jure jail guards. As he was some­times vi­o­lent in court too, the judge too was un­der tremen­dous pres­sure.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, he did not even spare his lawyer.  Dur­ing court pro­ceed­ings, when Ad­vo­cate P N Lekhi pleaded for Sat­want Singh’s in­no­cence, call­ing the as­sas­si­na­tion an in­ter­na­tional con­spir­acy, Sat­want would shout, ‘I killed her, I don’t know why P N Lekhi is say­ing what he is, but I did kill her!’.

The au­thor de­scribes Sat­want Singh as “Gabru Jawan.” At that point, from his be­hav­iour, Sat­want Singh seemed to be clear of what he had done.  Once his anger sub­sided af­ter a while, Sat­want Singh -who used to at­tack his se­cu­rity guards, started spend­ing time walk­ing or play­ing a game of foot­ball with them.  The Jail au­thor­i­ties al­lowed fam­i­lies of the three to bring food for them from home and even have lunch with them in their cells.

His prison cell was like a hos­pi­tal room as he had un­der­gone many surg­eries.

Cit­ing deep flaws in the In­dian crim­i­nal ju­rispru­dence sys­tem, Gupta ad­mits that the com­mon be­lief was that if the vic­tim had been any­one other than Mrs Gandhi, all the ac­cused would have been ac­quit­ted. This per­cep­tion was widely ad­mit­ted and dis­cussed through­out the Sikh world too.

Metic­u­lous plan­ning by the jail au­thor­i­ties in such high-pro­file cases is com­pre­hen­sively doc­u­mented.  A young teenaged Lakhi­ram, who was a con­fi­dante of an IB of­fi­cer -the son of one of the pe­ons at the IB of­fice, was as­signed to be a cook for Sat­want Singh, as the prison au­thor­i­ties were wary of poi­son­ing by other pris­on­ers.

The jailer says that Ke­har Singh was like a gov­ern­ment bu­reau­crat. Quiet and de­cent, he gave no trou­ble to any­one. He was like a re­li­gious preacher -spend­ing his time read­ing books of faith or just whiling away in bed.

Sunil Gupta is un­spar­ing of Bal­bir Singh -a Delhi po­lice sub-in­spec­tor, whom he de­scribes as a per­son who was full of non-stop non­sense. Lodged next to Ke­har Singh’s cell in ward num­ber 8, his con­vic­tion was based on the po­lice story alone, which hinged on the the­ory that in the first week of Sep­tem­ber, he had a sight­ing (see­ing of Baaz-fal­con), which goaded him to carry out the killing of Mrs In­dira Gandhi.

Gupta opines that it was his be­hav­iour of brag­ging which led to his con­vic­tion by the trial court. For­tu­nately, the Supreme Court over­turned the judge­ment and ac­quit­ted him, though the In­dian In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau was very up­set and taken aback with the or­der of the apex court.

Ke­har Singh and Bal­bir Singh were lodged in a sep­a­rate area of the same jail where Sat­want Singh was kept.

Gupta opines that it was Bal­bir Singh’s be­hav­iour of brag­ging which led to his con­vic­tion by the trial court. For­tu­nately, the Supreme Court over­turned the judge­ment and ac­quit­ted him, though the In­dian In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau was very up­set and taken aback with the or­der of the apex court.

As the date of hang­ing came closer, Sat­want grew qui­eter and hardly ate much, ob­serves the jailer. While Ke­har Singh’s fam­ily kept push­ing one mercy pe­ti­tion af­ter an­other but Sat­want said only God had the au­thor­ity to judge him and no one else.

On the des­ig­nated day -6 Jan­u­ary 1989, the same two men who had abused Judge Chan­dra for sen­tenc­ing them to death could not be rec­og­nized. They were quiet and pon­der­ing over what was ap­par­ent and im­mi­nent.

Af­ter read­ing his re­li­gious scrip­tures, Ke­har Singh asked the au­thor, who was a law of­fi­cer if any­thing could be done to save him. Sat­want said no such thing. Gupta wrote: “I re­mem­ber the last black look on their faces and then, they were gone, sud­denly.”

The gov­ern­ment de­cided to not hand over the bod­ies to their fam­ily mem­bers. They were cre­mated next to Jail 3 as the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion of Delhi had de­clared that piece of land as a cre­ma­tion ground.  Later on, the jail au­thor­i­ties or­ga­nized a trip to Harid­war for the fam­i­lies ac­com­pa­nied by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer and jail deputy su­per­in­ten­dent to im­merse the ashes of both.

Gupta felt amazed that the fam­i­lies of Sat­want Singh, Ke­har Singh and Bal­bir Singh were un­fazed and the Sikh com­mu­nity never aban­doned the three ac­cused. He sur­mised that their com­mu­nity iden­ti­fied strongly with the cause and deed of Sat­want Singh and Ke­har Singh. Ex­press awe at the com­mu­nity sup­port, he writes, “What­ever their rea­sons, the fam­ily and com­mu­nity never gave up on these men.”

‘I killed her, I don’t know why P N Lekhi is say­ing what he is, but I did kill her!’.

The jailer did­n’t miss to men­tion that the Akal Takht Sahib -the Supreme tem­po­ral au­thor­ity of the Sikhs, de­clared both as mar­tyrs.

The ‘Jo Bole So Ni­hal’ chanted by Sat­want Singh Ke­har Singh con­tin­ues to re­ver­ber­ate in the com­mu­nity to this day as the com­mu­nity cher­ishes their mar­tyr­dom.