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Probe confirms fake encounters
but uses Mistaken
Idenitity ruse
WSN Bureau
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Now the politicians and top police brass in Punjab is under
pressure to bail out the guilty cops by keeping the report under
wraps. The observation that these were cases of “mistaken
identity” also goes to show the panel’s soft approach towards
the officers. |
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 CHANDIGARH: An
inquiry into Fake Encounters, a typically Punjab Police invention to
kill completely innocent people, has finally found that most
encounters were not genuine.
A committee
headed by ADGP (Crime) J.P. Birdi has prima facie found that
encounters carried out by state police officers during the days of
terrorism were not “genuine”.
It has
recommended departmental action against some of the cops.
Others on the
panel were DIG Ishwar Singh, DIG B.K. Uppal, AIG M.S. Chhina and
Senior Superintendents of Police of various districts.
Some of the
officers involved in four controversial encounters probed even
received gallantry medals and cash awards for eliminating “dreaded
terrorists”.
It is not clear
whether the findings were submitted to the Punjab DGP N.P .S. Aulakh
or the CM himself.
However, in the
true spirit of the way the Punjab Police and law dispensing
authority functions, the committee has left a small window for them
to obtain some relief. Instead of labelling the encounters as
“fake”, it has merely described them as cases of “mistaken
identity”.
“Although the
ones killed in police encounters were terrorists, but since these
were cases of mistaken identity, departmental action against more
than 36 cops, including senior police officers, is recommended,” the
committee has observed in the report.
The Chief
Minister had constituted the committee after four former terrorists,
who the Punjab police had claimed to have killed in encounters,
surfaced last year and alleged that the cops had killed other people
instead.
Now the
politicians and top police brass in Punjab is under pressure to bail
out the guilty cops by keeping the report under wraps. The
observation that these were cases of “mistaken identity” also goes
to show the panel’s soft approach towards the officers.
In 2007, Gurnam
Singh Bandala, a former terrorist, surfaced even as the police had
claimed to have killed him in an encounter, and also claimed awards
and medals for the action. It later turned out that the person
actually killed was Sukhpal Singh, a resident of Kala Afghana in
Gurdaspur district.
An IPS officer
who had claimed to have led a police contingent of 28 men in the
encounter near Morinda in which “Bandala was killed” was posted as
DSP in Rupnagar at the time. He is at present SSP of a Punjab
district.
In another case,
“terrorist” Jaspal Singh Bhatti, said to have been killed in the
Shivpuri area of Madhya Pradesh, had turned up alive. It was then
alleged that the police had actually killed one Pritpal Singh of
Nagoke village in Tarn Tarn district.
The police also
took a beating when another killed “terrorist”, Jagdish Singh, alias
Disha, showed up to claim that a Punjab police havaldar, Jagdish,
had been eliminated instead.
8 October 2008
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