India - Punjab: Politics over murderous attack on Sikh preacher (Editorial, The Tribune)

The Tribune, May 25, 2016

EDITORIAL

Badals and Babas
Politics over murderous attack on Sikh preacher

Ever since Chief Minister Badal demolished the established police structure by making SHOs report to Akali leaders, application of the law has become selective. The empowered tehsil-level Akalis use the police as a private force. Now the Akali leadership is caught in a trap of its own making. It does not seem to know how to handle a crime in which it cannot afford to annoy either party. There are two Babas, both have large followings and both are useful.

The attack on Sikh preacher Dhandrianwale comes days after Home Minister Sukhbir Badal’s boastful claim that Punjab is among the safest states in the country. Daily incidents of lawlessness apart, the unsolved murder of the Namdhari Mata still mocks his claims of police efficiency. In the Dhandrianwale case the police has acted but selectively, suspectedly at the behest of the political leadership. It has arrested eight suspects, but the mastermind, according to the Ludhiana police, is yet to be identified. The victim has left no one in doubt who the mastermind is. There is a self-confessed patron of the assailants Harnam Singh Dhumma, head of the Damdami Taksal. And Dhumma has publicly admitted to the Taksal hand in the attack. He has owned the assailants and offered them legal help. One of the vehicles used in the crime has been recovered and its ownership is attributed by the police to Dhumma. The latter has not denied it.

Dhumma has made the task of the police simpler by also disclosing the motive of the crime: “The attack on Dhandrianwale is the result of his objectionable remarks on the Taksal’s ‘dastar’ (turban) and false propaganda being carried out by him inside and outside the country”. And yet he has not been questioned. The Badals seem to be weighing the political gains and losses of enforcing the rule of law. All citizens are supposed to be equal before law. The way the police deals with ordinary mortals caught in such situations needs no elaboration. The incident and its handling are reminiscent of the pre-militancy days. The baneful consequences of political patronage for a little-known Baba should not be forgotten.

The case of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar . . . Regional leverage, not justice (Edit, Hindustan Times)

[Posting of the below material is not an endorsement for Death Penalty in this case. It is one thing to campaign for all prisoners faced with death penalty, but it become quite another when regional or ethnic considerations propel the opponents.]

Hindustan Times
New Delhi, April 15, 2013

Keep politics out of it

The usual Punjabi joie de vivre associated with Baisakhi was missing a bit this year with the talk veering to terrorism and clemency in the case of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar. He has been convicted of carrying out a bomb blast at the youth Congress Delhi office in September 1993, killing nine people and leaving another 25 injured.

With this, the thorny issue of the Khalistan insurgency which ultimately claimed Indira Gandhi’s life has once again come to the fore. At the Baisakhi celebrations in several places, stalls were seen selling Rs. 100 T-shirts with Bhullar’s face printed on them.

A regional newspaper circulated a petition to save the 48-year-old Bhullar, a Khalistan Liberation Force terrorist, from the gallows. Rallying his party’s supporters, a Shiromani Akali Dal leader brought up the anti-Sikh carnage of 1984 and demanded for judicial consistency.

The Akali Dal has now brought this microcosm of discontent to the Capital. After the Supreme Court rejected Bhullar’s plea for commutation of his death sentence to a life term, the Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal has met the prime minister, demanding that Bhullar be given clemency.

Bhullar’s case has now begun to resemble that of Afzal Guru. Though a revival of militancy in Punjab is considered unlikely, fears of fringe extremism and a radicalised youth are adding fuel to reports that Bhullar may eventually be hanged secretly. In such a purportedly tense setting, the Akali Dal’s public campaign for a pardon — the party is considering filing a review petition in the Supreme Court — can only do harm to the letter of the law.

Interestingly, the Punjab ruling party is choosing not to concentrate on Bhullar’s mental stability or his custodial suicide attempts. It seems to be emphasising his ethnic identity more.

Similarly, M Karunanidhi used the case of Bhullar to push for a commutation of death sentences awarded to three convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The DMK chief’s sympathies, like those of Mr Badal’s, appear to be governed by a desire for regional leverage, not rational justice. The law, by its definition and construct, remains above parochial sympathies. But by adding their two bit worth, political advocates for convicted persons are not doing justice to anyone, least of all the majesty of the law.