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Amod Kanth's
gallantry medal is badge of shame
In
October 2000, as the victims fought against Amod Kanth in various
forums, Manoj Mitta of The Indian Express brilliantly brought out
the sad reality behind the honour bestowed on the shady cop. Later,
Justice Nanavati took strong exception to the "badge of shame"
headline the newspaper used, but Mitta stood his grounds. We present
here an excerpt from Mitta's report.
 "The story begins on November 5, 1984 when Amir Singh was killed by
a mob of anti-Sikh rioters as he slipped out of his Paharganj house
to call the police for help.
But the police claimed that Amir had been killed in a shootout
between him and his family on one side and the police and the Army
on the other. And the following year, Kanth, now the Joint
Commissioner of Police, was awarded a gallantry medal. Another medal
went to the then SHO of Paharganj police station, S S Mannan, for
the same shootout in which a soldier, Kishan Bahadur, and a rioter,
Mangal Dass, were killed.
However, the police version was turned on its head when the Central
Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) established that the bullets
recovered from the bodies of Dass and Bahadur did not match any of
the arms seized from the Sikh family.
This CFSL report, submitted in April 1985, corroborated the
contention of Trilok Singh and his family that Bahadur and Dass were
not shot by them but that they were killed in the crossfire between
the police and the Army.
It still took four long years for the prosecution to withdraw their
murder case against Trilok and his entire family, including women
and minor children, on December 8, 1988 on the basis of the CFSL
report.
While granting permission to withdraw the case, additional sessions
judge S.P. Singh Chaudhary recorded the prosecution's admission that
the CFSL report had "ruled out (the possibility of) the injuries
being caused to the deceased by bullets fired from the arms
recovered from the accused persons."
Kanth, when contacted by The Indian Express, said: "The failure of
the case due to a technicality does not detract from the role for
which I was given the gallantry award on the recommendation of the
Army."
He claimed that as the police had to deal with innumerable cases in
the wake of the riots, the one related to the shootout might not
have been properly investigated. For instance, the weapons actually
used for killing, he said, might not have been recovered from the
culprits.
When pointed out that wasn't it odd that all the accused were
members of one family, including minors, Kanth said: "I am telling
you a truthful account from memory. There was anyway no scope for
planting a story about something that happened so suddenly in the
heart of the city. I was locked up in a position where I had to
engage in firing and I myself rushed Bahadur to the hospital. The
bullet that killed him was actually meant for me.''
Meanwhile, even when the prosecution withdrew the case, the
administration couldn't care less. According to Trilok's affidavit,
Amir was lynched by a mob on November 5 but the administration stuck
to the police gallantry story. In fact, the sub divisional
magistrate of Paharganj, Srivatsa Krishna, noted as late as February
27, 1997: "The deceased Amir Singh was firing on armed forces from
the roof of his house and was killed in the cross-firing by the
armed forces. As such he was not an '84 riot victim.''
His widow, Gurcharan Kaur, then took the matter before Kiran Bedi,
who was special secretary to the Lt Governor of Delhi, as she would
be entitled to compensation only if Amir was categorised as a riot
victim.
On March 11, 1997, Bedi directed that "necessary hearing with
documents may be done to give fair judgment to the complainant." It
was in such circumstances that seven months later, Amir Singh was
finally acknowledged as a riot victim and his widow was paid the due
compensation of Rs 3.20 lakh.
In his modest tenement in Mahavir Nagar, Trilok said he wanted the
gallantry award to Kanth and Mannan to be withdrawn because ``that
will purge our family of the stigma and humiliation of the criminal
proceedings forced on us.
4 April,
2007
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