[Released December 9, 2013]

India’s Supreme Court, in 2006, admitted that “dehumanizing torture, assault and death in custody” are so “widespread” as to “raise serious questions about credibility of rule of law and administration of criminal justice.” In 2010, the Asian Human Rights Commission concluded: “Torture, in its cognate and express forms, is practiced in every police station in the country.” One Indian police officer estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 acts of torture were committed in his police station alone between 1985 and 1990. In 2010, the Christian Science Monitor warned of a sharp increase in reported custodial torture cases (a sliver of the actual number which occur), reporting:

According to human rights groups, data on torture isn’t recorded unless there is a death in custody. Those annual figures have been rising: up to 1,977 cases in 2007-2008 from 1,037 officially reported cases in 2000-2001. [1]1

In short, Indian citizens in general and minorities in particular are targets for the Indian State’s decades-long habit of controlling its citizens through torture, custodial murder, and false encounter killings by police and other security forces. Although the world has reached the 21st century, New Delhi governs the South Asian continent with the delicacy of the stone age.

Police officers are regularly ordered to engage in arbitrary, extralegal killings of random victims. A 2008 report by the Independent People’s Tribunal recounted: “Far from being viewed as criminal activity on the part of the police and the State’s armed forces, the practice of encounter killings is often rewarded with promotions, monetary rewards, and awards for the police officer’s bravery…. In Punjab, Kashmir, and the Northeast, security forces continue to construct fake encounters to kill suspects and ordinary persons in the hope of receiving rewards and promotions from the State.”2 [2] In 2009, HRW reported the admission of one officer:

“This week, I was told to do an ‘encounter,’” a police officer we will call Officer Singh told Human Rights Watch in January 2009. He was referring to the practice of taking into custody and extrajudicially executing an individual, then claiming that the victim died after initiating a shoot-out with police. “I am looking for my target,” he said. “I will eliminate him.”

Working in Uttar Pradesh, Officer Singh is the kind of police officer who should be in prison for misusing his authority. Instead he is protected by his superiors. It is in this way that impunity continues to thrive in India — and the reputation of the police continues to slide. [3]3

One explanation for the systematic practice of torture by Indian police forces is that the commission of torture is not a criminal act under Indian law. Nationally, there is no legal definition of torture or prohibition of its practice; Indian law actually protects police who practice torture, as recorded in 2010 by The Milli Gazette:

Several provisions within the Indian Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and various national security related laws provide immunity to these officials. Section 197 of the CrPC allows for all-encompassing immunity by providing that the Central or state government in question must grant sanction for the prosecution of any government official … alleged to have committed a criminal offence “while acting or purporting to act within the discharge of his official duty.” The Supreme Court has upheld this provision. [3]4

Furthermore, a legal loophole grants police officers immunity from prosecution for torture and related crimes under international law. Although India signed the Convention Against Torture in 1997, its Parliament has failed to ratify the treaty. In 2010, Lok Sabha passed “The Bill for the Prevention of Torture” to harmonize Indian law with the UN treaty. The bill died in Rajya Sabha, the upper-house of Parliament. However, should India eventually pass the bill, even that would fail to produce any real change, as noted in 2010 by the Network for Improved Policing in South Asia:

The definition of torture as provided in the Bill does not conform to the UNCAT. It will include only extremely serious injuries such as permanent loss of eye or ear, emasculation, bone fractures, or hurt which causes severe and debilitating pain for twenty days or more. In other words, it lays down a very high threshold for an act to qualify as “torture.”

The Bill even lays down a limitation period within which requires that a court can entertain a complaint only if it is made within six months of the date of the offence. As a general rule, criminal laws tend to prescribe no time limits whatsoever, let alone one as short as six months. [5]5

Indian State atrocities since the early 1980s — including the impunity with which the perpetrators are met — have been exhaustively documented by rights groups. In 2008, the Independent People’s Tribunal stated:

A study conducted by the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network noted that encounter killings were not isolated incidents but occurred throughout India. They are part of a ‘deliberate and conscious State administrative practice’ for which successive Indian governments must bear responsibility. Various Indian governments have implicitly sanctioned the use of extra-judicial killings by members of the police forces, army, and security personnel as an acceptable alternative to the judicial system. [6]6

Victims hail from practically every minority group in India, including Christians in Orissa in 2007-08, Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, Sikhs in Punjab and New Delhi in 1984 and into the 1990s, Kashmiris since the 1950s, and Dalits on a daily basis. Rather than punishing police, soldiers, and politicians who blatantly massacre minorities, the Indian state rewards them. The Independent People’s Tribunal concluded:

The culture of impunity is the biggest threat to the rule of law in India. Torture, extra-judicial killings, and forced disappearances will not stop overnight…. While the media covers incidences of custodial violence and deaths, extra-judicial killings, and forced disappearances, it tends to focus only on high-profile cases. The majority of India’s middle class are unaware of the full extent of the violence inflicted on the poorest and marginalised in Indian society. [7]7

Some of most infamous architects of genocide in India who have received impunity and reward for their atrocities include L.K. Advani, Kamal Nath, Jagdish Tytler, Narendra Modi, Sumedhi Saini, and Mohammad Izhar Alam. Every one of these figures enjoyed exceptional political triumphs after spearheading egregious, extremely well-documented massacres of minorities. Not a single one has been prosecuted. Most remain deeply influential in the national and state politics of India.

Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat and a BJP politician with deep ties to Hindu supremacist groups, presided over the Gujarat Pogrom of 2002. In one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of modern India, mobs armed with addresses of businesses and residences owned by Gujarat’s Muslim minority systematically eliminated Muslims. HRW reported that nearly 2,000 Muslims were massacred by Hindu mobs and over 150,000 displaced. Modi ordered Gujarati police not to halt the bloodshed or aid the victims. The U.S. State Department later concluded that Modi was implicit in the riots, that he ordered Gujarati police not to stop the violence or aid the victims, and that his police forces were directly involved in the bloodshed. Modi was never charged, however, but was instead reelected to a third term with a landslide vote. In an unrelated incident, the Independent People’s Tribunal reported: “The use of encounter killings as a political tool was recently exemplified by [Modi], who sensationally declared responsibility for an encounter killing of a Muslim criminal as a means of gathering popular support on his election round.” [8]8

Sumedh Saini, known to his victims and their families as “Badal’s Butcher,” was appointed Punjab’s Director General of Police in March 2012 by the state’s Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal. At the time, he was facing a criminal trial for his abduction and murder in 1994 of three people. His trial is still pending. He is known for building his career by orchestrating police killings of thousands of Sikhs in the 1990s. In his bloodiest days, the Indian government was documented as paying police officers cash bounties to murder Sikhs. On the U.S. House floor, Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) states: “The State Department Human Rights Report this year said over 41,000 cash bounties were paid to police in Punjab for extrajudicial killings of Sikhs between 1991 and 1993. That was 41,000 people. Murdered…. This goes beyond just one ethnic group or one religious group. It goes into a lot of them…. This is not me talking. Read Amnesty International. Read the International Red Cross. All these human rights groups say these things.” [9]9

L.K. Advani, who was Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2000 to 2004 and is another leading figure in the Hindu supremacist movement, personally directed the Hindu rioters who destroyed the 16th-century Babri Mosque in 1992. On December 6, 1992, rioters from the BJP and the VHP, both militant Hindu supremacist organizations, were incited by Advani to attack the 465-year-old Babri Mosque in Uttar Pradesh. Police were sent to prevent its destruction, but one journalist reported: “The police were mainly Hindus and reluctant in this emotional, polarized climate to fire on their own, so they tended to restore order by standing in front of the Hindu mobs and shooting at the Muslim mobs.” Subsequent rioting lasted for weeks and at least 1,000 innocents, mostly Muslims, were murdered.

Mohammad Izhar Alam, in the 1980s, led “Alam Sena,” aka the “Black Cats,” a death squad responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indian youth. Alam assembled a personal militia of 150 men, including “cashiered police officers,” said New Delhi-based U.S. Diplomat Robert Blake. He continued: “The group had reach throughout the Punjab and is alleged to have had carte blanche in carrying out possibly thousands of staged ‘encounter killings.’” Bodies of his victims are still being identified. On November 13, 2011, Punjab Human Rights Organisation and Khalra Mission Organisation released a list of 34 newly identified victims of Alam Sena. In October 2011, however, Alam was promised a Punjab Legislative Assembly constituency by the state’s Chief Minister.

Kamal Nath, currently India’s Union Cabinet Member for Urban Development, was a Member of Parliament in 1984 when he was witnessed provoking mob violence during the Delhi Pogrom. Along with several other MPs, Nath offered cash bounties, distributed weapons, and issued orders to rioters, providing them with printed address lists of Sikh businesses and residences to target. Journalist Sanjay Suri personally witnessed Nath directing a mob of 4,000 people to burn several Sikhs alive and raze Gurdwara Rakab Ganj in New Delhi. Other MPs instrumental in orchestrating the genocidal attacks included Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, both of whom were later rewarded with promotion within India’s Central Government. Monstrously, when many Sikhs and other Indian minorities fled India post-1984, Jagdish Tytler was appointed Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs.

The South Asian continent currently weeps blood from state-sponsored, orchestrated, and tolerated violence in other regions as far-ranging as Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Manipur, and Kashmir. The unifying factor in every one of these states is police indifference to the torture and murder of minority populations, typical direct involvement of the police and other security forces in those very same crimes, and near total impunity for both civilian and government culprits. Police tactics are universally identical — indefinite detention without charges, brutal torture, false encounter killings, custodial murders, and illegal disposal of victims’ bodies through cremation, canal-dumping, or mass graves.

Orissa offers a recent example of some of the worst violence against Christians in Indian history. Violence began in December 2007 when Hindu supremacists from the VHP rioted against Orissan Christians after top VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati accused Dalit Christians of colluding with Naxalite-Maoist insurgents. The bloodiest incidents occurred in August 2008 after Saraswati was assassinated. Naxalites immediately claimed responsibility, but the VHP seized the opportunity to stir up anger against local Christians. Mobs of VHP members began roaming the state, targeting Christians.

Tallying the total damage, All India Christian Council reported that the violence produced “640 Christian houses burnt, 54,000 Christians homeless, 70 deaths and another 50 people missing and presumed dead (of these, 6 Protestant pastors and one Catholic priest killed), 18,000 Christians injured, 2 women (including a nun) gang-raped, at least 149 churches destroyed, and 13 Christian schools and colleges damaged.” The nun who was gang-raped was Sister Meena Lalita Barwa. On August 25, she was assaulted by “a mob of up to 50 men armed with sticks, axes, spades, crowbars, iron rods and sickles” while at a prayer hall. They dragged the nun into the streets. While chanting Hindu slogans and pouring kerosene on a priest they had also seized, the mob began to rape Sister Meena. She was then paraded half-naked past a group of 12 police officers, who “ignored her and talked in a ‘very friendly’ manner to her attackers.”

According to HRW, the anti-Christian violence has roots in Hindu supremacist opposition to freedom of religion. A 2007 HRW report stated:

Right-wing Hindu organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal have been promoting anti-Christian propaganda in Orissa because they want the state’s Christians, most of them members of tribal groups, to convert to Hinduism. These groups accuse Christian missionaries of forcing tribal people and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity. In January 1999, Hindu militants in Orissa trapped Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in their car and burned them alive. [10]10

Chhattisgarh is an illustration of a new problem plaguing India, which is the collusion of international corporations with India’s central and state government in defrauding Indian citizens. Police act as enforcers for this devilish deal by seizing private property through eminent domain, stripping citizens of the right to assembly for redress of grievances, violently dispersing peaceful dissenters, and squashing free speech. This manifests in incidents such as that reported in January 2012:

Massive violence and chaos erupted at the public hearing held for major power plant expansion plan of Lanco Amarkantak Power Private Limited (LAPPL) in the industrial town of Korba about 200 km north of Raipur on Saturday. The police resorted to lathi-charge and lobbed tear gas shells to  disperse the villagers who strongly opposed the public hearing convened  for securing environment clearance for the proposed expansion plan of Lanco….

The public hearing couldn’t [be] held at the declared venue after the villagers refusing to part their land for the proposed project sat on demonstration and blocked the road since morning…. Trouble began when the police prevented the way of several women, children and elderly villagers who tried to reach out to the collector and the SP to express their displeasure over the manner the public hearing was carried out. It resulted into a clash with the force. [11]11

Manipur demonstrates how the Indian State grants legal immunity to its ongoing crimes against humanity. Under the auspices of the “Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958,” Indian security forces reserve the right arbitrary arrest, warrantless search and seizure, and shooting to kill anyone on suspicion of breaking the law. A 2008 report by HRW introduced this legislative block to prosecution, noting, “Soldiers and police are protected by laws granting immunity and officials unwilling to hold them accountable for serious crimes.” Identifying the specific crimes of security forces, HRW stated:

Torture of detainees, in particular severe beatings during interrogations of suspected militants and their supporters, remains common. Torture victims described to Human Rights Watch how they were arbitrarily arrested, beaten, and subjected to electric shocks and simulated drowning (waterboarding).

Extrajudicial killings often followed a consistent pattern in which the military or police took a person into custody, often in front of eyewitnesses, who was later declared to have been killed in an armed encounter with militants. Such faked “encounter killings” often occurred when security forces suspected someone to be a militant, but did not have enough evidence to ensure a conviction. On occasion, government officials or members of the armed forces would later admit to relatives that a person had been killed by “mistake.” This claim is never made officially, so in police records the victim remains identified as a militant, and avenues for redress remain closed. [12]12

Kashmir is also subject to the provisions of the “Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958,” and the product of legislative immunity for the actions of Indian security forces in that region has been, predictably, extreme human rights violations. Disappearances, torture, encounter killings, and other atrocities are common. HRW’s “World Report 2012” stated:

Thousands of Kashmiris have allegedly been forcibly disappeared during two decades of conflict in the region, their whereabouts unknown. A police investigation in 2011 by the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) found 2,730 bodies dumped into unmarked graves at 38 sites in north Kashmir. At least 574 were identified as the bodies of local Kashmiris. The government had previously said that the graves held unidentified militants, most of them Pakistanis whose bodies had been handed over to village authorities for burial. Many Kashmiris believe that some graves contain the bodies of victims of enforced disappearances.

The government of Jammu and Kashmir has promised an investigation, but the identification and prosecution of perpetrators will require the cooperation of army and federal paramilitary forces. These forces in the past, have resisted fair investigations and prosecutions, claiming immunity under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code. [13]13

India’s problems represent abandonment of leadership in favor of force. The Indian State seeks to control through domination and intimidation; instead of leading its diverse population, it attempts to homogenize them by forcing everyone into the same category.

This attitude is enshrined in India’s Constitution. Article 25, for instance, promotes absorption of several distinct people groups into a pan-Hindu category, reading in part: “…the reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion.” This definition of “Hindu” is viewed by Indian minorities as assault on their religious freedom and an attempt to forcibly convert Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists with the stroke of a pen.

This bloody history of India’s 64 years of independence has left that country in a fragile, divided, shell-shocked state. Indian minorities face an increasingly bleak future. The final story with which we will leave you is one of true tragedy suffered by Jaswant Singh Khalra, a true satyagrahi whose life-long commitment to nonviolence and justice resulted in his brutal execution at the hands of Indian police officers. Perhaps no other person in the history of independent India has more perfectly encapsulated Mohandas Gandhi’s statement: “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”

In the harsh atmosphere of 1990s-era India, many Sikhs were disappeared by Indian security forces. Secretly arrested and held without charges, attorney, or trial, they were tortured and then killed in custody. To conceal their crimes, police illegally cremated the bodies. Inspired to investigate the disappearance of some close colleagues, Khalra discovered official records documenting the illegal killings. He soon pieced together evidence that at least 25,000 Sikhs had been secretly killed by Indian police over a 10-year period. He began to publicize his findings internationally and prepared them for publication.

On September 6, 1995, police seized Mr. Khalra from the driveway of his home. He was arrested in full view of multiple witnesses who recognized and identified several notorious, high-ranking police officers as the kidnappers. Nevertheless, Indian officials initially denied Mr. Khalra was imprisoned. A police official later testified in court, however, that the activist was brutally tortured for over a month, shot dead by police, and abandoned in a canal.

Jaswant Singh Khalra left the world with words which should echo in the conscience of every human appalled by the barbaric behavior documented in the previous pages: “I challenge the Darkness. If nothing else, I will not let it settle. Around myself, I will establish Light.” We urge all readers to join Khalra in establishing light by standing against the tyranny of the Indian State. If you care for humanity, bow to the tireless voice of your conscience — hear it, listen to it, obey it. Condemn the bloodshed of the Indian State and demand justice.

The evidence is indisputable. Since the 1980s, the Indian State has been marked by unbridled corruption, total impunity for state-sanctioned killers, and suspension of the rule of law. Long-standing laws and policies making a mockery of due process include: 1) Indefinite detention without trial; 2) bans on seditious speech, which is arbitrarily defined; 3) Article 59 of the Indian Constitution, which allows India’s president to institute dictatorial “President’s Rule” over any region designated as “troubled”; 4) torture of most detainees, many of whom are killed in custody; 5) the use of bounties and quotas to encourage (and even require) security forces to deliberately kill minorities in staged encounters and 6) the assumption of guilt until one is proven innocent.

Please join us in standing up for peace, equality, and justice in the country of India by signing support to the following two resolutions:

1) “End Impunity for Torture by Indian Police.” We, the undersigned, demands that India a) ban torture in its domestic law, ratify the UN Convention Against Torture to comply with international law; b) ban police officers charged with torture, extralegal killings, or other crimes against humanity from holding any public office (whether elected or selected); c) cooperate with all human rights groups to encourage transparency and permit unrestricted documentation of human rights abuses; and d) promptly prosecute all officers, regardless of rank, who are implicated in crimes against humanity by any legitimate eyewitness and material evidence.

2) “Prosecute Indian Officials Guilty of Human Rights Crimes.” We, the undersigned, request the International Criminal Court at the Hague to immediately pursue prosecution, conviction, and punishment of Narendra Modi, Sumedh Saini, L. K. Advani, Mohammad Izhar Alam, and Kamal Nath. Additionally, we demand the Indian State fully cooperate with such court proceedings.

Citations:
1. Arnoldy, Ben. “In India, beaten US journalist becomes focus of police torture probe.” Christian Science Monitor. April 13, 2010.
2. “State Terrorism: Torture, Extra-judicial Killings, and Forced Disappearances in India.” Independent People’s Tribunal. February 2008. 200.
3. “Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police.” HRW. August 4, 2009. 4.
4. “Impunity for Torture: More of the Same.” The Milli Gazette. June 28, 2010.
5. Balakrishnan, Sumant and Devyani Srivastava. “Prevention of Torture Bill OR Impunity for Torturers Bill.” Network for Improved Policing in South Asia. August 2010.
6. “State Terrorism: Torture, Extra-judicial Killings, and Forced Disappearances in India.” Independent People’s Tribunal. February 2008. 199.
7. Ibid. 225-226.
8. Ibid. 199.
9. Representative Burton (IN). Congressional Record 141: 107 (June 28, 1995) p. H6451-H6452.
10. “India: Stop Hindu-Christian Violence in Orissa.” HRW. December 30, 2007.
11. Ejaz Kaiser. “Chhattisgarh: Violence and chaos at Lanco’s expansion plan meet.” Hindustan Times. January 7, 2012
12. “India: Army Killings Fuel Insurgency in Manipur.” HRW. September 16, 2008.
13. “World Report 2012: India.” HRW. January 2012. 2.