Jus­tice Ajit Singh Bains, the chair­per­son of the Pun­jab Hu­man Rights Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PHRO) and a for­mer judge of the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court talks about the lack of hu­man rights aware­ness and ac­tiv­ity in Pun­jab and takes down the com­mu­nist par­ties -left, down and cen­tre, for their be­ing hand in glove with the per­pe­tra­tors of state ter­ror­ism and their deaf­en­ing si­lence on the atroc­i­ties in Pun­jab. Ad­dress­ing a pub­lic meet­ing or­gan­ised by the Bom­bay unit of the Peo­ple’s Union for Civil Lib­er­ties and while talk­ing to the me­dia in Mum­bai, with­out minc­ing words, the late iconic voice for hu­man rights called the then Pun­jab “a po­lice state with more than 10,000 peo­ple in jail.”

THERE IS NO RULE OF LAW IN PUN­JAB.  IT HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A PO­LICE STATE. More than 10,000 per­sons are in jail. The Golden Tem­ple is un­der siege for the last five years. Pun­jab is cut off from the rest of the world. No for­eign jour­nal­ists, hu­man rights ac­tivists, leg­is­la­tors are al­lowed to en­ter Pun­jab, ex­cept on spe­cial visas. Even Pun­jabis liv­ing abroad have to get a spe­cial visa to en­ter the state. The whole state is un­der siege,” he said at a press con­fer­ence arranged in Bom­bay last week by the Bom­bay Union of Jour­nal­ists.

Jus­tice Ajit Singh Bains said that ter­ror­ism un­leashed by the state had alien­ated the Sikhs in Pun­jab and hence though they did not sup­port ter­ror­ism by mil­i­tant groups, they did not co­op­er­ate with the po­lice in end­ing it ei­ther.

In re­ply to a ques­tion, he said though the Com­mu­nist Party of In­dia and the Com­mu­nist Party-Marx­ist op­pose “pri­vate” ter­ror­ism, they never talked of state ter­ror­ism. They had even op­posed the sug­ges­tion of trans­fer­ring Po­lice Di­rec­tor Gen­eral KPS Gill af­ter the Ru­pan Deol Ba­jaj episode in­volv­ing moral turpi­tude. Hence they were fail­ing to carry the peo­ple with them.

Con­trary to me­dia re­ports, law and or­der had de­te­ri­o­rated af­ter Op­er­a­tion Black Thun­der, he said. Nei­ther Op­er­a­tion Black Thun­der, nor Op­er­a­tion Woodrose (in which the coun­try­side of Pun­jab was combed) nor Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar had helped.

Jus­tice Bains said that af­ter he stud­ied the his­tory of the Golden Tem­ple, he re­alised why Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar had hurt the Sikhs so much. The tem­ple, he said, had al­ways been the fo­cus of the strug­gle against tyranny. As re­cently as dur­ing the Emer­gency, Akalis used to court ar­rest in batches which started from the tem­ple.

The Golden Tem­ple had al­ways been the fo­cus of the strug­gle against tyranny.

Dur­ing the Raj, he said, the strug­gle to lib­er­ate gur­d­waras from British con­trol had been seen by Gandhi and Nehru as a bat­tle for free­dom. “The gov­ern­ment of In­dia should have there­fore thought many times be­fore in­vad­ing it,” he said.

Jus­tice Bains had headed a four-mem­ber com­mit­tee set up by the Bar­nala gov­ern­ment, which in­ves­ti­gated po­lice “en­coun­ters” in 1985, Find­ing most of these to be fake, they had unan­i­mously rec­om­mended that a ju­di­cial com­mis­sion go into them, and also asked Amnesty In­ter­na­tional to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. Nei­ther rec­om­men­da­tion was fol­lowed. Amnesty was re­fused per­mis­sion to en­ter In­dia by the Cen­tre in 1987.

The PHRO had Hin­dus as well as Mus­lim mem­bers in it, mostly ad­vo­cates and jour­nal­ists. Its vice pres­i­dent,  jour­nal­ist Sukhdev Singh, had been ar­rested un­der the Ter­ror­ism and Dis­rup­tive Act (TADA) for six months. Sev­eral of the ad­vo­cates had also been ar­rested, he said.

Ad­dress­ing a pub­lic meet­ing or­gan­ised by the Bom­bay unit of the Peo­ple’s Union for Civil Lib­er­ties, Jus­tice Bains likened the TADA to the types of leg­is­la­tion en­acted by regimes such as the one in South Africa. Tor­ture cou­pled with the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing of sus­pects were com­mon in Pun­jab, he said.

Jus­tice Bains had headed a four-mem­ber com­mit­tee set up by the Bar­nala gov­ern­ment, which in­ves­ti­gated po­lice “en­coun­ters” in 1985, Find­ing most of these to be fake, they had unan­i­mously rec­om­mended that a ju­di­cial com­mis­sion go into them, and also asked Amnesty In­ter­na­tional to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. Nei­ther rec­om­men­da­tion was fol­lowed. Amnesty was re­fused per­mis­sion to en­ter In­dia by the Cen­tre in 1987.

Out­lin­ing what he saw as the per­ni­cious fea­tures of the Act, the re­tired judge said of­fences un­der TADA fall out­side the high court’s ju­ris­dic­tion, and can only be tried by spe­cial courts.

Un­like un­der the In­dian Pe­nal Code or the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Code, sus­pects held un­der the TADA are deemed guilty un­til proved in­no­cent. The bur­den of prov­ing in­no­cence lies with the sus­pect.

The Act dis­al­lows bail ex­cept in cases where the sus­pec­t’s in­no­cence is proved. Tri­als are held in-cam­era and the iden­tity of state wit­nesses is with­held from the ac­cused. It also pro­vides for the con­fis­ca­tion of the prop­erty af­ter con­vic­tion.

“There is no rule of law in Pun­jab, no hu­man rights; every­thing is in the hands of the po­lice.”

This ar­ti­cle was first pub­lished in The Spokesman Weekly, pub­lished from New Delhi on 2nd Jan­u­ary 1989. This ar­ti­cle has been re­trieved from the archives of the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary.

Jus­tice Bains scathingly at­tacked the cen­tral gov­ern­ment which he squarely blamed for the cur­rent cri­sis in Pun­jab. A form of state-spon­sored ter­ror­ism was un­leashed in the re­gion, he said. “There is no rule of law in Pun­jab, no hu­man rights; every­thing is in the hands of the po­lice.”

The killing of in­no­cent peo­ple by the po­lice had dri­ven young men to take up arms, Bains said. “Sikhs are only re­act­ing to state ter­ror­ism. The gov­ern­ment has em­ployed crim­i­nals to deal with ter­ror­ism,” he said.

He blamed `”goonda el­e­ments” or­gan­ised by Con­gress-I work­ers for the No­vem­ber 1984 car­nage, and “lumpen el­e­ments” aided by the lo­cal po­lice for the death of 6 Sikh stu­dents at Bidar ear­lier this year.

The killing of in­no­cent peo­ple by the po­lice had dri­ven young men to take up arms, Bains said. “Sikhs are only re­act­ing to state ter­ror­ism. The gov­ern­ment has em­ployed crim­i­nals to deal with ter­ror­ism.

Ac­cus­ing the gov­ern­ment me­dia of por­tray­ing Sikhs as sep­a­ratists, Bains as­serted that the Sikh com­mu­nity was op­posed to the se­ces­sion of Pun­jab. Bar­ring some mil­i­tant or­gan­i­sa­tions, no Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tion had de­manded a sep­a­rate state, he main­tained. “If Sikhs wanted a sep­a­rate state, they would have de­manded it in 1946-47.”

Bains charged that the gov­ern­ment was try­ing to ex­ploit Hindu sen­ti­ments by putting a com­mu­nal hue to the vi­o­lence in Pun­jab. He de­nied that there was any Hindu-Sikh ri­valry in the state.

On the oc­ca­sion, the PUCL passed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing upon Pres­i­dent R Venkatarar­nan to com­mute the death sen­tence awarded to Ke­har Singh, con­victed in the In­dira Gandhi as­sas­si­na­tion case.

Jus­tice Ajit Singh Bains passed away on 11 Feb­ru­ary 2022. He was a hu­man rights cham­pion through­out his life.