Fake “encounter killing” to cover up the truth

A recent exposure carried out by the Tehelka newspaper provides evidence to suggest that Talwinder Singh Parmer was cold bloodedly murdered by the Punjab police in 1992 and then declared killed in an armed encounter with the police forces. The Indian state has claimed that Parmar, then Chief of the Babbar Khalsa International, was the mastermind behind the Kanishka airplane blast on June 23, 1985. Since Parmar was a Canadian citizen, the Canadian police (RCMP) is also investigating the matter. The revelations surrounding the murder of Parmar once again point to how the security forces of the Indian state regularly carry out the cold-blooded murder of various individuals in ‘encounters’, in order to hide the real hand behind organized acts of terrorism.

According to the above newspaper report, a team of the Punjab Human Rights Organisation (PHRO), comprising advocate Rajvinder Singh Bains, Principal Investigator Sarabjit Singh and retired DSP Harmail Singh Chandi (who had participated in the arrest of Parmar and retained his interrogation records secretly for the last 22 years despite orders from his superior officers to destroy them) placed this evidence, based on a 7 year long independent probe, before the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Canadian government in 2006 to re-examine the 1985 Kanishka blast. While the investigations into the Kanishka blast case have been stretching on for the last 22 years, the PHRO report points out that the actual witnesses were never approached and each time fabricated evidence was provided by the very same officers who had ordered Parmar’s killing.

The report points to a massive cover-up operation by the Punjab police. According to police witnesses, Parmar was interrogated by top police officers including DGP K.P.S. Gill and teams of intelligence officers of the government of India. During his confession, Parmar is said to have named a certain Lakhbir Singh Brar Rode as the mastermind of the blast and also stated that some officers of the Indian High Commission in Canada had prior knowledge of the blast, because of which they had withdrawn their tickets on the same flight at the last minute. However, both the FIR and a Source Report prepared by the Jalandhar police have omitted the naming of Rode, suggesting that Rode was linked to Indian intelligence officers who used him to instigate Parmar for the blasts and is now being deliberately shielded.

The PHRO report has also exposed many loopholes in the official version given by the Punjab Police about the arrest and subsequent death of Parmar. Contrary to the Punjab Police’s FIR stating that Parmar was killed on October 15, 1992, documentary evidence shows that Parmar was secretly picked up from Jammu Police custody on October 9. On October14, a high level decision was conveyed to the Punjab Police that Parmar was to be killed in an ‘encounter’. As is typical in all such cases of fake encounters, there were neither any witnesses to the ‘fight’, nor was any policeman injured, even though the FIR claims that Parmar and his group fired 500 cartridges and lobbed hand grenades! Out of the six persons killed in the ‘encounter’ only three bodies were identified. Moreover, Parmar’s post-mortem was done at 2 a.m., while the FIR records his encounter at 5:30 a.m.

It has also been revealed by the PHRO report that tremendous pressure has been mounted by senior and retired Punjab Police officers on former DSP Harmail Singh Chandi and his colleagues who prepared the FIR, to destroy Parmar’s confession records and not testify in further investigations.

It may be recalled that all this occurred during the period when savage state terrorism had been unleashed against the Sikh community in particular and against the youth and people of Punjab in general, in the name of “curbing extremism”.

The above facts, as in many other cases, point to the hand of the Indian state and its agencies in organizing terrorist incidents that claim the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Invariably in all such cases, the truth is covered up and a propaganda blitzkrieg is carried out blaming organizations or individuals belonging to some specific community. This is used to sow suspicion and division in the ranks of the people and harass, arrest, torture and terrorise people of that community. Meanwhile, Commissions of Inquiry are set up, which carry on for years and years, even as various witnesses and agents are eliminated or silenced in other ways, so that the truth may never be known.

The Indian state claims that it is ‘fighting terrorism’ in order to justify the worst kind of repression of people by the state security forces, including detention, torture, rape and cold-blooded murder. This is systematically practiced to crush all forms of opposition to the state and break the fighting unity of the people. However, what is being revealed time and again, is that the state itself is the biggest terrorist of all, the organizer of the most heinous crimes against the people, armed to the teeth and backed up by all kinds of repressive laws which allow its personnel to commit all manner of crimes with impunity and get away without being punished.

People must unite irrespective of their region or community or political affiliation and refuse to tolerate any form of state terrorism, under any pretext whatsoever.