Pres­sure mounts on Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal lead­er­ship and can­di­dates Dar­bara Singh Guru and Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal as the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court has or­dered the Home Sec­re­tary of the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment to fur­nish the Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port to the fam­i­lies of Sikh youth killed in Nako­dar in 1986 and the Pun­jab Chief Min­is­ter Cap­tain Amarinder Singh has an­nounced a fresh look into the in­dis­crim­i­nate fir­ing by the po­lice. 

After 33 years, Baldev Singh –fa­ther of Ravin­der Singh Lit­tran heaved a small sigh of re­lief as the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court has or­dered the Home De­part­ment of the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment to make avail­able Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port into the killings of four Sikh youth in the in­fa­mous Nako­dar fir­ing case of Feb­ru­ary 1986, dur­ing the third pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing of the case to­day.

Af­ter doggedly pur­su­ing the case over the last three decades, Baldev Singh, who saw his son’s body burn in front of him, with­out him get­ting the op­por­tu­nity to see the body has not re­lented for a sin­gle day since then. None of the four fam­i­lies could have a  last glimpse of their dear ones.

 Speak­ing to WSN on the phone, Baldev Singh said, “I see a glim­mer of hope. I will not rest till jus­tice is done and there is proper clo­sure to our agony of the last 33 years.”

33 years ago, four Sikh youth pro­tes­tors –Ravin­der Singh Lit­tran, Bald­hir Singh Ram­garh, Jhilman Singh Gor­sian and Har­min­der Singh Chalu­per were killed in Nako­dar on 4 Feb­ru­ary 1986.

Ad­vo­cate Hari Chand Arora has in­formed that Jus­tice Ma­habir Singh Sindhu has or­dered the Home Sec­re­tary of the gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab to make avail­able Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port, con­tain­ing an­nex­ures, ar­ti­cles and doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the case, to the pe­ti­tioner af­ter charg­ing the req­ui­site fees.

The main Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port, which was be­ing sought for the last three decades, sud­denly came in the open when in the last ses­sion of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly, the Speaker in­formed the house that the re­port was al­ready tabled way back in 2001.

I see a glim­mer of hope. I will not rest till jus­tice is done and there is proper clo­sure to our agony of the last 33 years.”

Baldev Singh, fa­ther of mar­tyr Ravin­der Singh Lit­tran

In his plea to the court, ad­vo­cate Arora in­formed Jus­tice Ma­habir Singh that as di­rected by the court, he and his client had made all ef­forts through the Pun­jab Vid­han Sabha and through a RTI ap­pli­ca­tion to the Home De­part­ment to get a copy of Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port, but to no avail and hence sought a di­rec­tion by the Court to the Home De­part­ment.

Ad­vo­cate Arora has fur­ther in­formed that the or­der of the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court, dur­ing the course of the third pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing of the case, di­rects the Home Sec­re­tary to take up the mat­ter se­ri­ously and in case the doc­u­ments are not made avail­able till the next date of 11 July 2019, then the Home Sec­re­tary has been asked to ap­pear in per­son be­fore the court.

 

The case poses more prob­lem for the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal and its can­di­dates –for­mer deputy com­mis­sioner and prin­ci­pal Sec­re­tary Dar­bara Singh Guru and for­mer Pun­jab As­sem­bly speaker oc­to­ge­nar­ian Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal, as the Pun­jab Chief Min­is­ter –Cap­tain Amarinder Singh, speak­ing to a sec­tion of the me­dia has said that “this case has come to our no­tice and a fresh in­quiry will be held and the guilty pun­ished.”

The Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal can­di­date from Fate­hgarh Sahib con­stituency is find­ing it hard to sat­isfy the me­dia and his con­stituents about his role in the Nako­dar po­lice fir­ing which led to the killing of four Sikh youth fol­low­ing an in­cident of sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib in Nako­dar, where he was the Deputy Com­mis­sioner and Baldev Singh’s pe­ti­tion al­leges that he con­spired with the po­lice through acts of omis­sion and com­mis­sion re­sult­ing in the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing of the four Sikh youth.

Even the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal can­di­date from Ja­land­har –for­mer speaker Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal is in the dock as it was dur­ing his tenure as speaker, the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port was tabled in the Pun­jab As­sem­bly on 5 March 2001, with­out an Ac­tion Taken Re­port and with­out any dis­cus­sion by mem­bers of the House.

Only un­der pres­sure of the Sikh San­gat, aware con­stituents and the me­dia, both Dar­bara Singh Guru and Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal have moved from their ini­tial de­nial mode to an ex­plana­tory mode cit­ing their in­no­cence. Neme­sis is def­i­nitely catch­ing up.

Hu­man rights de­fend­ers have stepped in and launched an ag­gres­sive so­cial me­dia cam­paign against Dar­bara Singh Guru, es­pe­cially in Fate­hgarh Sahib Con­stituency.  In the midst of the elec­tions, re­li­gious events are be­ing or­gan­ised to re­call this case, pay homage to the mar­tyrs and in­stil in the minds of the vot­ers the role of the above two can­di­dates, with an ap­peal not to vote for them. For­mer Jathedar Akal Takht  Bhai Ran­jit Singh has openly come out urg­ing peo­ple not to vote for these can­di­dates and all Badal Dal can­di­dates. Dal Khalsa Pres­i­dent Harpal Singh Cheema, whose vil­lage falls in Fate­hgarh Sahib, speak­ing at a func­tion in Do­raha, or­gan­ised to pay trib­utes to the four mar­tyrs of Nako­dar, said, “Mar­tyrs can­not be for­got­ten. The least we can do is not to vote for those who are re­spon­si­ble for the killings of the Sikh youth at Nako­dar in 1986.”  So­cial me­dia ac­tivist Sarab­jit Singh Ghu­man said, “The fight for jus­tice must go on.”

An im­promptu group Saka Nako­dar Jus­tice Com­mit­tee is run­ning a sus­tained cam­paign of cre­at­ing aware­ness about the case and ap­peal­ing to vot­ers not to vote for these two can­di­dates.

The fam­ily of Ravin­der Singh Lit­tran re­mains stead­fast in its pur­suit of jus­tice.  WSN stands rock solid with the fam­i­lies of the four Sikh youth mar­tyrs in this jour­ney.