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Ranjit Singh
Kukki arrested again on High Court orders
Delhi HC cancels bail of man for whom even the dead man’s daughter
pleaded
Gian Inder Singh
 NEW
DELHI: In a shocking twist to the case of Ranjit Singh Gill alias
Kukki, the son of Padma Bhushan awardee and former Vice Chancellor
Khem Singh Gill, the Delhi High Court has upheld his life sentence
for the murder of Congress MP Lalit Maken in 1985 and asked the
police to arrest him immediately. Kukki was arrested and sent to
jail immediately thereafter.
Incidentally,
the case is unique because among those who have pleaded with Delhi
Chief Minister Shiela Dixit and others for freedom for Kukki is also
Avantika Maken, the daughter of the slain Lalit Maken and his wife.
Even Lalit Maken's close kin Ajay Maken, then a Speaker of Delhi
Assembly, had pleaded for freedom for Kukki in writing and had
argues his case with then Chief Minister of Delhi Shiela Dixit, a
move that was seen as something extra-ordinary and underlined
Kukki’s sincerity in taking up the life's loosened threads once
again to weave a beautiful narrative.
Now, last
Tuesday, a Division Bench of Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice P K
Bhasin dismissed the appeal filed by Gill, who is presently on bail,
challenging the trial court's 2003 conviction order. Maken was the
son-in-law of late President Shankar Dayal Sharma and his name
figured at number three in the list of 227 people prepared by the
People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) of the people who led or
instigated mobs that killed and burnt to death hundreds of Sikhs in
1984.
"Lalit Maken
reportedly paid the mobsters Rs.100 each plus a bottle of liquor. A
white Ambassador car reportedly belonging to him came four times to
the GT Road area near Azadpur. Instructions to mobs indulging in
arson were given from inside the car," the PUCL report said. The
judgment against Ranjit Singh Gill says that it was on the basis of
this list that he and his two accomplices targeted Lalit Maken.
After hearing
the arguments of the counsel for Gill and the prosecution for
commuting the life sentence, the court had reserved its order in
April 2007. HC court rejected Gill's submission that the statement
of sole eye-witness Mohamed Salam, a domestic help of the victims'
family, was contradictory and the trial court had ignored this fact.
The Bench also rejected the argument that Salam was nine-year-old
when the murder took place on July 31, 1985 and it was 15 years
later, in 2002, that he identified Gill, raising doubts that he was
tutored by the prosecution.
After the
incident, Gill had fled to the
US.
Two years later, through Interpol, he was arrested and lodged in US
jail. In May, 2000, the US court allowed his extradition to India.
In February, 2003, a sessions court had sentenced him to life
imprisonment for killing Maken, his wife Geetanjali and a security
man at their Kirti Nagar residence in July, 1985.
In its verdict
the court gave a finding that some misguided Sikhs vowed to take a
revenge of alleged genocide of Sikhs in
Delhi
following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
in 1984.
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Denying
a Dream
 When Ranjit Singh Kukki had married Sarabjot Kaur on September
25, 2004, it was expected that all eyes will be on the bride who
had chosen to marry a man convicted for murder. Kaur was then
just 25, and Kukki was 40. She was well educated, a double post
graduate in Punjabi and Education, and he was pursuing his
studies even during his period of incarceration. But the media
was focusing on someone else.
The daughter of the man
whom Kukki had murdered was there to attend the marriage.
Avantika's entire perspective about who is a "terrorist" and
what goads someone to pick up a gun and take a life had
undergone a change, a change that perhaps many in this world,
including the spiritual children of George W Bush, need to
undergo if they have any hopes of winning a war against terror.
Avantika Maken specially
visited Ludhiana to attend the marriage. As for Kukki, his
efforts to put the past behind him could not have been more
sincere. That the Indian state and the justice dispensing
machinery has once again denied Sarabjot Kaur the best gift --
her husband's freedom -- will rankle all right thinking people,
among them Avatika Menon. |
According to the
prosecution, the victims were shot dead by five motorcycle-borne
unidentified Sikh young men at the MP's residence. The MP's three
year-old daughter was the lone survivor. Besides Gill, there were
four others accused: Sukh Dev, who died in an encounter, Harjinder
and Sukhvinder, who were executed in another case and Daljeet Singh
who was acquitted by the trial court due to lack of evidence against
him in 1999.
Gill's father,
Khem Singh Gill, is a much respected agriculture scientist and a
former PAU V-C who has spent post-retirement years serving the Baru
Sahib academy. Kukki's sincerity in understanding his actions,
re-assessing them, and understanding the nuances of life and purpose
as he grew more mature impressed Lalit Maken's only child Avantika
Maken who later not only met him personally but even pleaded for his
release.
In February
1986, Kukki escaped to the
United States
where he was working at a gas station when a year later on May 14,
1987 he was arrested along with his friend Sukhwinder Singh Sukhi.
Extradition proceedings were held against them while they were in
jail for thirteen years. On May 5, 2000 they were extradited to
India. Ranjit Singh Gill was convicted and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
The Delhi High
Court expressed serious reservations over the reasons of no past
history of crime or good behaviour ever since which the trial court
had quoted to award him a life sentence and not a more harsh one.
“It is a fit case where at least a notice of enhancement of sentence
ought to have been given to the appellant requiring him to show
cause why his sentence of life imprisonment be not enhanced in view
of the murder of not only two men but a hapless woman too,” the
Delhi HC Bench observed, clearly faulting on the wrong side in this
case where a better approach has been shown by the society,
including the dead man’s kin.
25 February 2009
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