Ajaib Singh: A Paradigmatic Case - Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP)

PART I

INTRODUCTION

Looking back on my human rights involvement in Punjab, a decade and a half long, I think of a stanza of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, which he had composed to grieve the cruelty and corruption of life around him five hundred years ago: “The age is like a knife. Kings are butchers. Religion has taken wings and flown. In the dark night of falsehood, I cannot see where the moon of truth is rising.” The aspects of social climate in Punjab, which Nanak grieved in this stanza, seem to have remained unrelieved.

Punjab, or rather the truncated part of the province east of the Pakistani border, which remained with India at the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, is a member state of the Indian Union. Totally landlocked, it covers 50,000 sq. kms out of India’s 3.3 million sq. kilometers of a diverse geography. Less than 2 per cent of India’s one billion population, the Sikhs constitute more than 62.1 % of Punjab’s approximately twenty-two million people. Before the partition of 1947, Punjab used to be an overwhelmingly Muslim province. This land of communal truncation of 1947 and the wounded consciousness of the civil war in its wake that took the toll of 200,000 to half a million deaths by various estimates, [1] witnessed another spell of a bloody political unrest in the last decades of the 20th century. The unrest developed from the Sikh political agitation to obtain a radical measure of political devolution, became violently separatist in its intense last phase, and was ruthlessly crushed by the Indian Union.

It is on this period of Punjab’s history that I look back with a puzzled conscience, trying to unravel the tangled skein of brutality and murder, the tenacity of the perpetrators, the agony of the victims, and attempting to extract from this chaos something remotely consonant with the ‘civilization’ that India claims to be. Let me illustrate my bewilderment with the example of a true story – the last act of a real-life tragedy.

Ajaib Singh: A Paradigmatic Case

Fifty-five years old Sardar Ajaib Singh from village Othiyan in Ajnala subdivision of Amritsar district was a man who handled problems of life with a calm and calculated approach. These qualities of his character had been very useful in preserving his family, property and considerable social standing in an area of Punjab that for a decade from 1984 remained locked in the spiral of Sikh insurgency and the ruthless and indiscriminate actions by India’s security apparatus to stamp it out. Ajaib Singh, elected head of his village council called Panchayat, had three grown up sons:

Thirty-five years old Kulwinder Singh, married with three young children, was employed as the Panchayat Secretary at Naushera Pannua block of Tarn Taran subdivision in Amritsar district. It was a challenging job that involved attending to local problems concerning land, revenue and development. Kulwinder was very popular for the fairness and energy with which he performed his duties.

Second son Jagbir Singh, thirty-two, managed the family’s twenty-five acres of irrigated agricultural land, which yielded good crops and income.

His third son Maminder Singh, twenty-eight, studied medicine and became a registered medical practitioner.

Ajaib Singh and his wife Manjit Kaur kept good health. As devout Sikhs, they often went on pilgrimages, and organized and attended with fervor the recitation of Guru Granth Sahib, the book of devotional hymns composed by the Sikh Gurus, on important events of the religious calendar. Ajaib Singh made some extra money as a property dealer and spent his spare time dabbling in the Congress politics, which brought him many influential friends also in the official and police circles. All seemed as well as they could be under the circumstances.

Ajaib Singh had for long been associated with the Congress Party and had not given up the association even after the army assaulted the Golden Temple of Amritsar in June 1984. As a devout Sikh, Ajaib Singh was very much anguished by this episode. But he attributed part of the blame for provoking the assault on Bhindranwale, the militant preacher of a Sikh seminary called Dam Dami Taksal.

Ajaib Singh was aware that the Congress politics in Punjab, essentially calculated to undermine the political base of the Akali Dal in the orthodox Sikh community, had been very injurious to Punjab’s interests. Indira Gandhi was personally angry with the Akali leaders for having astutely opposed her Emergency regime that suspended all the fundamental rights of citizens guaranteed by the Indian Constitution between June 1975 and March 1977. Nearly 45,000 Akali workers had to be put under preventive detention in the period. The movement against the Emergency, like all other successful Akali campaigns, had been organized from the precincts of the Golden Temple. [2] In March 1977, an alliance of several non-Congress parties had replaced Indira Gandhi’s Emergency government at the center. Winning the State Legislative Assembly elections, the Akali Dal formed its third coalition government in Punjab with the Janata Party, which mostly represented the Hindu population. It was difficult to bring the government down by organizing defections, as the coalition represented a national consensus against the Emergency regime and its members could not cross over to the Congress without risking their political career. Her best bet was to contrive a fundamentalist Sikh movement, both obstreperous and popular. That would not only strain the government’s ability to maintain the rule of law, but also expose it to be reneging from the orthodox Sikh principles. The scheme required flagrant issues and charismatic individuals to rake them up. Bhindranwale was all game and picked up violent quarrels with the heterodox Sikh sect of Nirankaris. [3]

The clashes that followed succeeded in diffusing the avid debate on the necessity to decentralize the State structure in India to give the provincial governments more powers, which had picked up momentum from the middle of 1977. Many leaders of the peripheral States of the Union, which had suffered the Center’s highhandedness, were on the side of substantial changes. [4] Arrayed against them were the Centrist hawks. The latter group represented the Hindu heartland and cut across party affiliations in believing that a united India was coterminous with a strong Center. [5] In the beginning it seemed that Bhindranwale’s religious crusades would take the attention away from the issue. [6]

Indira Gandhi managed to regain political power at the center in 1979. The Akalis, now out of office, embarked on the path of agitation. Bhindranwale, with no organization or money to match the vast resources of the traditional Akalis, had risen from his obscure background to eclipse the Akali leaders and to become the epitome of Sikh aspirations. [7] With the view to harness his popularity with the Sikh masses, the Akali leaders persuaded him to join the Dharma Yudha Morcha in July 1982 by adopting the Anandpur Resolution as the basis. Having once done that they were unable to balk out of the professed goal because Bhindranwale would not allow them to do so. Both the Akali leaders and the central government soon began to employ the whole range of Machiavellian stock-in-trade to cheat, cajole, bribe and browbeat their way out of the simple and consistent position of Bhindranwale that there would be no settlement against the mandate of Anandpur Resolution. [8] Indira Gandhi tried to woo him back, but he spurned all her emissaries. [9] Clearly, Bhindranwale had become her Frankenstein’s Monster.

Meanwhile, Indira Gandhi seemed to be losing the political ground once again. The results of twenty bye-elections in twelve states of southern and northern India, held in the third week of May 1984, had gone against the Congress Party. It had lost all the prestigious contests. The Congress candidate in the Malihabad constituency in the capital city of Utter Pradesh, had lost to the fledgling party of Maneka Gandhi, the Prime Minister’s estranged daughter-in-law. Rajiv Gandhi’s own constituency, as it happened, was next to Malihabad. An intrepid Maneka Gandhi had announced that she would be a candidate against her brother-in-law in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. The election results had shown that northern India was being swept by a wave of Hindu anger over the government’s inability to suppress the Sikh extremists in Punjab. The southern peninsula, on the other hand, was under the sway of strong regional parties inimical to the Congress. In Andhra Pradesh, traditionally a Congress stronghold with its 42 parliamentary seats, a new regional party called Telugu Desam formed by a popular celluloid hero Rama Rao, had swept the polls. [10]

The bye-election results convinced Indira Gandhi that unless she took drastic action against Sikh extremism, she couldn’t hope to form the next government at the Center. A swift military operation that would strike Bhindranwale and his band of followers dumb, as the top brass of the army had promised her, was seen to be the only answer. [11] It would not only restore the Hindu confidence in her leadership, but also put her in a better situation to deal with moderate Akali leaders. Indira Gandhi and her advisors had not expected the operation to get so protracted and bloody that it would not end before the demolition of the Akal Takht. All her calculations and strategies had not only been hurtful to Punjab, they had also boomeranged to ruin her. On 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her own Sikh security guards.

But Ajaib Singh remained associated with the Congress Party from his lack of faith in the sectarian thrust the Akalis gave to their political agenda and from the conviction that the separatist militancy was a mindless venture which would eventually be put down by the armed might of the Indian State. The outcome was well anticipated. But Ajaib Singh did not know that the State action against the Sikh insurgency would engulf his own family.

For some time, Kulwinder and his family lived in a rented house at Naushera Pannua of Tarn Taran subdivision where he was employed as the Panchayat Secretary. In the beginning Punjab seemed to be limping back to normalcy. The Congress Party under Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership had won the parliamentary elections with an unprecedented popular mandate to fight Sikh terrorism. But like a statesman, Rajiv Gandhi tried to heal the wounds of Punjab by releasing all the important Akali leaders from detention and then by making several concessions to the Akali Dal by signing an Accord with its President Longowal in July 85. Although Longowal was assassinated soon thereafter, his moderate successor Surjit Singh Barnala led the party to an overwhelming victory in the State Assembly elections to form his government.

For a while, situation seemed to be improving. But the central government was unable to keep the promises, which it had made in the Longowal Accord. The radical Sikh groups that had been lying dormant resurfaced. Militancy revived. The slogan of Khalistan was again in the air. The Union government brought Punjab under President’s Rule after dismissing the Akali government in October 87. Paramilitary forces were deployed to crack down on desperados. When the situation in that part of Punjab, arising out of conflicts between the armed Sikh groups and India’s security forces, became very volatile, Kulwinder shifted his residence to Amritsar mainly for the reason that his young children needed education. Ajaib Singh gave him money to build a small house in Amritsar. Kulwinder daily commuted to his work on his motorcycle.

20 December 1991 was a crisp winter day. Kulwinder left for his work little late that morning. On the way, a pedestrian asked him for a lift on his motorcycle, a TVS Suzuki No. PB02-C-4455. The man later identified as Palwinder Singh Sona was a militant. It is possible that Sona forced Kulwinder to take him along on the pillion of his motorcycle, as his brother Jagbir Singh later suggested to me. It cannot also be ruled out that the two may already have been acquainted. That could hardly be inconceivable in the situation then obtaining in Punjab. Thousands of young Sikhs had embraced the path of gun to confront the Indian State. Many empathized with their sentiments and helped them indirectly to find shelter and food even when disagreeing with the wisdom of their chosen path. Kulwinder’s job brought him in contact with all kinds of characters who were involved in land and revenue disputes. If we assume that Kulwinder had known Palwinder Sona to be a militant, we must also see that he could not have refused the hitchhiker from the fear of reprisal. The motorcycle was stopped for a routine check at a barrier set up by Sadar police station of Amritsar on the road across the railway station. Inspector Ajaib Singh, Station House Officer (SHO) of Sadar Police Station, was personally leading the checking. One police constable at the barrier recognized Sona as a wanted militant and both of them were taken into custody.

By coincidence, the arrest was witnessed by Manjit Singh, head of the village council of Raja Sansi, an influential man with many contacts in the police. He was looking for a taxi near the barrier when the police nabbed the two. Manjit Singh was a friend of Kulwinder’s father who also knew Inspector Ajaib Singh. Recognizing Kulwinder, he went up to the Inspector and pleaded for his release. But the Inspector did not agree. Later, Manjit Singh went to Kulwinder’s house and informed his wife Rajbir Kaur who immediately sent a message to her father-in-law in his village Othiyan. Ajaib Singh accompanied by his second son Jagbir Singh rushed to Amritsar and met Inspector Ajaib Singh at Sadar police station who said that Kulwinder would be released after his interrogation.

The same night, Sona was killed in an orchestrated “encounter”, a faked armed combat between the police and a group of militants. Punjab newspapers reported the killing on 21 December. The Tribune said Palwinder Singh Sona was a top militant who carried the designation of a Lieutenant General in his underground outfit. The report also said that his three accomplices had escaped and that the police had also killed three other unidentified militants in armed encounters in the outskirts of the city. The report made Ajaib Singh and his family very nervous. The police could easily kill Kulwinder in their custody and report it as a death of an unidentified militant in an armed combat. But on 21 December, Inspector Ajaib Singh and a large police force brought Kulwinder to his house No. 24 in Sahebzada Zujjar Singh Avenue on Ajnala road in Amritsar. The entire family was present when the police led him to search the house. The search did not yield anything incriminating. But Kulwinder was not allowed to converse with his family members and was taken away after the search.

Ajaib Singh decided to negotiate Kulwinder’s release. He involved some middlemen, including Manjit Singh of Raja Sansi village who knew the Inspector well. Inspector Ajaib Singh demanded one hundred and fifty thousand rupees. Borrowing the amount from his relatives, Ajaib Singh sent it across to the Inspector through the broker who had negotiated the deal. By then, the Inspector had changed his mind. The case was no longer in his hands, he explained. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Chattopadhyay had taken over the investigation. Ajaib Singh now went to Raghunandan Lal Bhatia, a senior Congress leader and former Minister in the Union government, for help. Bhatia talked to the SSP two three times on telephone. The SSP said Kulwinder had to be interrogated. Ajaib Singh then requested Surinder Singh Kairon, son of former Chief Minister Pratap Singh Kairon and another influential Congress leader in the State, to intervene. Kairon talked to the SSP who again was not very responsive.

Ajaib Singh asked the Sadar police station to formally register his complaint that Kulwinder had been illegally arrested. His friend Deputy Superintendent of Police Davinder Singh called the Station House Officer to recommend the registration. But Sadar police station refused to do so.

Punjab was under the Governor’s rule. So, Ajaib Singh sent urgent telegrams to the Governor, the Director General of Police (DGP), the Chief Secretary and the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court, informing them about the illegal arrest and beseeching them to intervene. Later, he also sent detailed written petitions about the arrest and the disappearance. But there was no response.

Kulwinder had been acquainted with Birendra Singh Kalon, then Additional District Commissioner of Tarn Taran. Approached by Ajaib Singh for help, Kalon found out that Kulwinder was under interrogation and was being forced to identify wanted Sikh radicals in the area. This was confirmed when a month after his arrest, the police took him to the village of Jagrup Singh Dhotiyan, a listed militant. Jagrup was arrested in the combing operation that followed, but one of his associates, also on the wanted list, escaped. As punishment, Kulwinder was badly tortured. Later, he was again seen by his former colleagues at Naushera Pannua. Kulwinder was unable to walk and his body showed signs of terrible torture.

Ajaib Singh pursued the case of his son relentlessly to no avail.

In early 1992, Punjab came under the Congress government with Beant Singh as the Chief Minister. Ajaib Singh again requested Raghunandan Lal Bhatia and Surinder Kairon, who had become a Member of Parliament, to help. But no one could ascertain Kulwinder’s whereabouts. Ajaib Singh wanted to know whether he was still being held for anti-insurgency operations, intensified under Beant Singh’s regime, or had already been killed.

Ajaib Singh met another Congress Member of Parliament Jagmit Singh Brar, who sometimes talked about the issues of justice in Punjab. Brar wrote to Union Home Minister Chahvan and, later in March 1993, personally met him to pursue the case. Ajaib Singh was also in Delhi to goad Brar into action. The Union Home Minister talked to Punjab’s Director General of Police K. P. S. Gill who confirmed that Kulwinder Singh had been killed. But there was no formal acknowledgement. The family never received the dead body, nor the mortal remains from the cremation, if it had taken place. The Sadar police station in Amritsar did not even bother to hide or destroy his Suzuki motorcycle No. PB02-C-4455, confiscated at the time of his illegal arrest. The motorcycle was openly used by its officers.

In 1996, Ajaib Singh engaged lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal in Chandigarh to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus - No. 324/1996 – before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The petition was backed with the supportive affidavits of Manjit Singh, who had witnessed the arrest, and other eyewitnesses. The court issued notice. SHO Ajaib Singh, who had taken Kulwinder into custody on 20 December 1991, became nervous about the possibility of his incrimination if the High Court ordered an inquiry. The officer began to liaison with the family members for a settlement, offering to pay a substantial amount of money if they agreed to withdraw the petition. Ajaib Singh spurned the overtures with contempt.

On 12 August 96, Sub-Inspector Gujinder Singh from the CIA staff office in Amritsar picked up Ajaib Singh and his two sons from their house and brought them to the B. R. Model School Interrogation Center. They were held in illegal detention for a day and threatened with elimination if they did not withdraw the petition from the High Court. They were released after Manjit Kaur sent telegrams to the higher authorities complaining about the illegal detention. Ajaib Singh also sent a letter about the illegal detention and the threat given to him at the CIA interrogation center to the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. But no action followed.

His second son Jagbir Singh had been employed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), as a dispatch clerk, on the recommendation of then President Gurcharan Singh Tohra. Jagbir worked in the head quarters housed within the Golden Temple Complex. Raghubir Singh was the temple’s manager, an influential person within the SGPC who was also acquainted with Inspector Ajaib Singh. In March or April 1997, while the inquiry ordered by the High Court was still pending, Raghubir Singh called Jagbir into his office to make a proposal on the Inspector’s behalf. He would pay one million rupees if his father agreed to withdraw the petition. Raghuvir Singh also threatened to transfer Jagbir to Jind, a small place in Haryana, if he failed in persuading his father to negotiate with the Inspector. Jagbir agreed to try.

In the evening, he could not muster the courage to take up the proposal with his father. Next morning, he opened the topic by mentioning that Raghuvir Singh was harassing him. Ajaib Singh asked him to explain and remained silent for a while after Jagbir completed the narration of his conference with Raghuvir Singh. Ajaib Singh then asked if he wished to accept the proposal. Jagbir said no. Ajaib Singh repeated the question again and again, with Jagbir affirming no compromise.

Raghubir Singh had proposed to pay one million rupees on the Inspector’s behalf. Ajaib Singh was suddenly seething with anger: He would pay one million and a half to recover his son. If it was not feasible, the Inspector should never contact him again. That was his message to Raghubir Singh. He was confident that the High Court would do him justice.

In the beginning, the matter seemed to be moving in the right direction. At the time of crucial hearing, lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal went away to America and Canada on invitation from the Sikh expatriate community to lecture on the human rights situation in Punjab. His junior was unable to attend the court proceedings. The judge had also changed. The petition was dismissed by the new judge S. P. Malte in October 96, on the ground of insufficient evidence that his son had been abducted by the police. Returning from his foreign tour, Lakhanpal promised to take the matter to the Supreme Court which, in the meantime, had taken cognizance of illegal mass cremations of supposedly unidentified bodies conducted by the Punjab police. The Supreme Court referred the matter to the National Human Rights Commission for determination of all the issues, after the Central Bureau of Investigation corroborated the allegations in its December 1996 report. Ajaib Singh expected his case to come up before the Supreme Court, as Lakhanpal had promised. But nothing happened.

For the next month or two, Ajaib Singh remained very distressed. Gurcharan Singh Tohra advised him to engage a Supreme Court lawyer in Delhi to file a fresh petition. Lawyer R. S. Sodhi demanded twenty-five thousand rupees, which he immediately paid up. For some time thereafter, Ajaib Singh remained involved in the anticipation that the hearing before the Supreme Court would soon commence. When it turned out that the court had not admitted the petition, he was crestfallen.

Soon, he started making fresh rounds of Chandigarh where he met the Akali Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal. Before the elections, the Akali Dal had promised justice to all victims of human rights violations that had taken place over the last decade. Badal proposed to mark an inquiry about his case to the Police Inspector General of the Border Range. Ajaib Singh said that his son had been murdered by policemen who would not, therefore, allow the truth to come out. Badal then marked the inquiry to the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar. This was in May 1997.

The Deputy Commissioner recorded the statements of several witnesses, and closed the inquiry on 26 June. It is not clear what happened thereafter, but on 4 July 1997 Ajaib Singh returned home looking dejected. Apparently, he had found out that the inquiry report was not going to say anything conclusive. For the next couple of days, he did not talk to anyone and remained unusually calm. His wife Manjit Kaur tried to engage him in conversation and to draw him out of his depression. She suggested that they sell a piece of their agricultural land to raise the resources to pursue their son’s case in other ways. But Ajaib Singh remained silent.

On July 7, 1997 morning, Ajaib Singh made his last pilgrimage to the Golden Temple, the Vatican of approximately twenty million Sikhs worldwide and the most important of their religious shrines. Ajaib Singh was attired in a saffron turban and a blue caftan, symbolizing sacrifice and immortality in the Sikh scheme of colors. But there was no joy in his demeanor. His forehead under the turban was taut and flecked with lines of bafflement and regret, eyes unfocussed. His lips quivered under his flowing white beard, rimed with saliva. In a slow and heavy gate, Ajaib Singh walked around the quadrangular pool of water (amrit-sar = pool of nectar, hence the city’s name) and went across the marble causeway from the western side into the main shrine called Harmandir. For a while, he joined the congregation before the Guru Granth, the Sikh scripture, the only object of worship in the Sikh temples, and tried to concentrate on the musical recitation of the hymns. Remaining listless, he bowed before the Guru Granth and stepped out. The musical chanting from the inside, relayed by loudspeakers, wafted in the air as the devotees washed and scrubbed the floor in a rhythmic sway. The square structure of the temple in white marble with its golden dome, an inverted lotus, reflected in the shimmering pool like its enchanted soul -- incorporeal, luminous and alluring.

Ajaib Singh walked the archway back to the circumference on the western side, and prayed at the five storied structure of Akal Takht, across the marble plaza facing the Harmandir. Founded in 1609 as the Sikh counterpoint to the imperial throne at Delhi, Akal Takht means the seat of the Timeless One, the cardinal principle of the Sikh religion, embracing both the creative and the transcendental aspects of existence. The building had been gutted during the Indian army’s assault on the temple complex in June 1984, but it had been rebuilt by the Sikh voluntary effort. Engrossed in his melancholy, Ajaib Singh walked back to the northern gateway of the temple under the Clock tower, and sat down on the last step of the staircase that descends to the lower plinth of the temple from the ground level of the outer surroundings. The building of the Golden Temple at a lower plinth is an architectural device to remind devotees that in the presence of Divine Grace they must humble themselves. [12]

Ajaib Singh pulled out a few sheets of paper from the pocket of his caftan, and began to write a long note. Such was his rueful concentration that he did not notice a relative, Mota Singh, who was also vising the temple, saw him jotting down something on a sheet of paper in great concentration. The relative assumed that he was calculating or writing something concerning his business as a property dealer. Mota Singh, a correspondent of Az Di Awaz, a daily newspaper published from Jalandhar, saw him likewise scribbling on some loose sheets of paper.

Ajaib Singh was composing his suicide note. Probably, he had already consumed the poison, which he had managed to procure and take along with him to the Golden Temple. After finishing the letter, Ajaib Singh walked into the premise of the Bank of Punjab, within the temple complex, whose manager Avtar Singh was his neighbor in Sahibzada Zujjar Singh Avenue. Ajaib Singh, who must already have been under the affect of toxins, told him that he had swallowed poison and expected to soon die. Avtar Singh probably could not grasp the seriousness of his situation and sent him home in his car. Ajaib Singh was vomiting and told his son Jagbir that he had taken poison with the intention to die because he could not bear the injustice any longer. Immediately, the family members rushed him to a hospital nearby where the doctors said that he must be taken to the main Civil Hospital. Ajaib Singh was already dead when doctors at the civil hospital examined him.

The cremation became a crowded affair. Some police officials approached Jagbir Singh to suggest that he should mention heart attack as the cause of his father’s death. Otherwise, they warned of consequences. But Jagbir Singh stated the truth and released his suicide note to the press. The national press blacked out the story. [13] The following is my short translation of the suicide note, which Ajaib Singh left behind. The note is dated Monday, 7 July 1997:

“In this house of Guru Ram Das, I seek forgiveness from everyone whom I may have in anyway unwittingly hurt or wronged.

Self-annihilation is the only way out of a tyranny that leaves no chance for justice. Oppressors like former SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu, who eliminated thousands of innocent Sikhs and also extorted millions of rupees, commit suicide under the unbearable weight of their sins. It is known that Jaswant Singh Khalra, because of his human rights work, had become Sandhu’s victim.

My son Kulwinder Singh was picked up by SHO Ajaib Singh of Sadar police station in Amritsar. My son had neither committed a crime nor was he absconding from the law. Why did the SHO kill him then? The time and the place of one’s death is suggested to be predetermined. But I cannot understand that SHO Ajaib Singh got promoted to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police as a reward for eliminating hundreds of young Sikhs, including my son.

No one has confirmed my son’s death. I have not received his ashes. Otherwise, I would not have gone to the High Court, which failed the purpose of justice. I approached the Chief Minister, Prakash Singh Badal. Some people say that he is not a fit person to rule Punjab. I beseeched him to find out the truth and to allow me justice. He marked the case to the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar for inquiry. Did Badal ensure fairness? I believe DSP Ajaib Singh gave the Deputy Commissioner a handsome amount of money to derail the inquiry.

I pray to Guru Ram Das to send me where my son is. I hope my prayers would be answered. Once again I apologize to the residents of my colony, my village Othian and Gumtala for inconvenience I may have inadvertently caused them. I am not in anyone’s financial debt. Nevertheless, I authorize DSP Davinder Singh to sell my land to settle any claim of liability that may arise.

I am grateful for the support I have received from Manjit Singh, Sarpanch of Raja Sansi, DSP Davinder Singh and Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra.

I wish to be cremated near the Martyr’s Shrine, Gurudwara Shahindan. I do not desire rituals, except the recitation of the Guru Granth, to attend my last rites. If my family wants to charitably commemorate my death, let them make an offering to the organization of Pingalwara.

The ink in my pen and also my time in this world are at their end.

Wahe Guruji ka Khalsa,

Waheguru ji ki Fateh!” [14]

This epistle in ‘black ink’ reminds one of Paul Celan who committed suicide to communicate the truth about the Holocaust which his ‘Death Fugue’ about “Ein Meister aus Deutchland” could not impart. For Ajaib Singh too life had become the canvass of farewell. As a forlorn character in the near view in a canvass, lost to history and without perspective, he loomed against the flatness and the monotony of a political power that he could punctuate only through his self-inflicted death.

I talked to Ajaib Singh’s surviving family members at length for the first time in September 1997, when I went to Amritsar to understand the train of events that had crushed him. The melancholy at life’s irrelevance before the State’s power to wish it away, which had driven Ajaib Singh’s to suicide, was also eating into their souls. His second son Jagbir would be there whenever I went to Amritsar, with his bundle of papers about the lost court cases, newspaper clippings and photographs of his father and his disappeared brother. He would also present himself at every press conference or public meeting organized by any human rights organization anywhere in Punjab.

He would not be the only one around with a tale of tragedy and impossible redress. His brother’s enforced disappearance, life-exhausting and fruitless pursuit of accountability and justice by his family, the suicide of his psychologically broken father, the trauma and the ruin of the surviving members – none of these are unique to his family. Punjab’s countryside is dotted with myriad other households that have similarly been destroyed by India’s war against the Sikh separatist threat. My survey of 838 incident-reports of enforced disappearances, conducted in the period of one and a half years from November 1997 to May1999, shows that 222 relatives of the victims had either committed suicide or died under trauma. In 500 of 838 incidents, the surviving relatives reported morbid psychological effects, including clinical insanity. Their morbidity and their suicidal bereavement, in my opinion, epitomize a fatal spiritual sickness that permeates the Indian society and makes the value of our own lives questionable.

klebsiella pneumoniae treatment