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The Medals of Shame
Sach Kanwal
Singh
 Even as former
Haryana police chief S.P.S. Rathore, convicted of molesting
14-year-old Ruchika Girhotra, will become the first police officer
to be stripped of his police medal, the Sikh Nation awaits whether
killers of hundreds of Sikhs will also get to lose their medals so
generously granted by the President of India and the honors
conferred by the Indian Nation State.
While media
reports in India said there was apossibility that other decorated
officers -convicted of a crime, dismissed from service or on the run
- could meet the same fate, few believed that New Delhi will strip
someone like KPS Gill of his medals and honors.
Gill was
convicted of outraging the modesty of a woman IAS officer and put on
probation for a year, though initially he was given a jail sentence
of three months.
"The Central
Police Awards Committee recommended withdrawal of the President's
Medal for Meritorious Service conferred on Rathore in 1985," India's
Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said, but it remained unclear whether the
rule will apply uniformly on those who donned uniform.
The
recommendation will go for a final call to President Pratibha
Devisingh Patil, who incidentally told a batch of IPS probationers
that "the authority of the uniform must be utilized to penalise law
breakers".
 "The committee
also decided to authorise the Home Ministry to recommend withdrawal
of police medals of those convicted of moral turpitude (conduct
contrary to community standards of justice, honesty or morals) or
dismissed from service for bringing disrepute to the police," Pillai
said. Any case that doesn't fall under these categories but in the
ministry's opinion has shamed the police would have to be referred
to the committee, he added. This provision would cover officers on
the run and other unforeseen possibilities.
However,
ministry officials were quick to clarify that the decision didn't
mean all tainted officers would automatically lose their medals.
Thus, KPS Gill may have earned the ultimate shame, having first
presided over innumerable fake encounters and custodial killings of
Sikh youth but he will get to keep his medal.
But while KPS
Gill's case is too well known, there is one of Amod Kanth that often
gets buried beneath the layers of fickle memory.
Amod Kanth will
also get to keep his gallantry medal. His case is in fact the height
of blatant-ism that India practices. Kanth was the only Delhi IPS
officer to get a gallantry medal during the 1984 Sikh massacre.
While it was claimed that he, as the then Deputy Commissioner of
Police, recovered ``deadly weapons'' and arrested ``indiscriminate
shooters'' in Paharganj, the reference was to a Sikh family which
lost its breadwinner Amir Singh that day.
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For
years, Indian media remained silent on Ruchika case. Now that it has
spoken out after 19 years, for how long should the Sikhs wait before
it makes KPS Gill's medals an issue? And after that, how long for
Amod Kanth's medal? |
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Four years
later, the entire family, charged with murder, was cleared by the
courts. Later, Amir's son Trilok Singh and his mother filed an
affidavit before the Justice G.T. Nanavati Commission asking for
Kanth to be stripped of his award.
The story began
on November 5, 1984 when Amir Singh was killed by a mob of anti-Sikh
marauders 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.
 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 victim of the Sikh massacres and his widow was
paid the due compensation.
Just when the
Ruchika family and Aradhna-Anand-Madhu Prakash family was knocked
off by India's justice dispensing machinery and the consequent media
outcry led to some focus on how the high and mighty twist the law
and courts in their favour comes another jolt for the family
fighting against Amod Kanth.
 Last Month, the
Delhi High Court asked it to approach an appropriate court for
seeking proceedings against Amod Kanth and other officers.
The order came
on a petition filed by Amrik Singh Lovely, one of a group of 16
victims, in 2005, seeking court intervention to punish the police
officers for “harassing and implicating him and his family members
in a false criminal case and for playing fraud against the
government of
India
for getting the President’s Police Medal”.
Justice
V.K.Shali, in his order, said: “The counsel for the petitioner has
the liberty to file any other complaint as he withdraws the case and
avails the remedy available in law.”
Amrik, in his
petition, had recounted how a mob had collected outside his
Paharganj residence on Nov 5, 1984, attacked his uncle Amir Singh,
and how his father Faqir Singh and other family members were rounded
up and jailed when a Kanth, then a deputy commissioner of police,
arrived on the scene. He also detailed how Kanth took no steps to
contain the mob, and in fact even rounded up a six-month-old baby,
and then jailed everyone in the Daryaganj police station.
All 16 were
allegedly kept in the lock-up for the night before the police
registered a case against them under several sections of the Arms
Act and the Indian Penal Code, including murder.
For years,
Indian media remained silent on Ruchika case. Now that it has spoken
out after 19 years, for how long should the Sikhs wait before it
makes KPS Gill's medals an issue? And after that, how long for Amod
Kanth's medal? If Amod Kanth’s brief CV describes his medal as a
Gallantry Award received “while saving thousands of Sikhs in
November 1984 riots taking extreme risk to life”, a clear case of
teasing the Sikh community, it is because New Delhi ah weighed on
the side of such gallant men as KPS Gill, Amod Kanth and KPS Gill.
6
January 2010
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