Lessons from Pilbhit

On April 5, a special CBI court sentenced 47 policemen to life imprisonment for the massacre of 10 Sikh pilgrims in a fake encounter in Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, 25 years ago. Ten of the 57 policemen charged with that crime have died before the trial ended. Some of the convicted policemen have retired from service, while others are still in service.

On April 5, a special CBI court sentenced 47 policemen to life imprisonment for the massacre of 10 Sikh pilgrims in a fake encounter in Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, 25 years ago. Ten of the 57 policemen charged with that crime have died before the trial ended. Some of the convicted policemen have retired from service, while others are still in service. According to news reports, the convicted policemen went on a rampage in the court premises on hearing the verdict. They alleged that the senior officers who had ordered them to carry out the massacre had never been brought to trial!

What happened in Pilibhit 25 years ago?

Pilibhit is in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh and home to a massive Sikh migrant farmer’s community. According to the charge sheet, on July 12, 1991, a bus carrying Sikh pilgrims headed for Pilibhit was stopped by the policemen. They forced 10 Sikh youth to get off the bus, divided them into groups, took them to different areas in the jungle and shot them dead. They cremated the bodies the same night, to cover up the crime. The top police officials of the area justified the fake encounter killing by declaring the next day that 10 ‘Khalistani terrorists’, with ‘criminal background’ had been killed and that ‘arms and ammunition had been recovered’ from the bus.

Why would 56 policemen decide to suddenly attack a bus, pull out pilgrims, murder them in cold blood, and then declare that they were dreaded terrorists? If the courts are to be believed, these policemen acted on their own, simply to get monetary rewards as well as promotions that were on offer for killing “dreaded Khalistani terrorists”. If this were indeed the case, it would not take 25 years for these policemen to be found guilty of cold blooded murder. For 25 long years, the families of the victims, as well as journalists and human rights activists have been fighting tirelessly to punish the guilty. They have pointed out how top officers of the UP police were in the forefront of portraying the murders of innocent people, as the killing of “dreaded terrorists” in an encounter.

Following the conviction of these policemen, spotlight has turned onto yet another gruesome and cold blooded massacre that took place in Pilibhit. This incident took place on November 8-9, 1994 inside Pilibhit jail. On that day, 28 TADA detainees were brutally beaten up by the jail staff. Seven Sikh prisoners died in this murderous attack. The remaining 21 received serious injuries.

Public opinion forced the then Mulayam Singh Yadav government to order a probe into the custodial murders. In January 1995, sanction was given to prosecute the Jail Superintendent and 41 other jail staff.  In March 2007, the case was quietly closed by the UP government and all charges dropped. 

According to the report of the UP home ministry, on which basis the prosecution of the Jail staff was sanctioned in1995, the TADA detainees were taken to an open field within the jail premises, with their legs tied, and mercilessly beaten to death. This was repeated on all the prisoners. This has been confirmed by journalists as well as medical personnel who treated the injured prisoners. The case was dropped because allegedly there was no independent witness to confirm that the prisoners had not been killed while trying to escape from jail, as alleged by the authorities!

The fake “encounter” in which the ten Sikh youth were murdered in 1991, as well as the brutal killings in custody of seven people in 1994 “while trying to escape” are no exceptions.

Beginning in the early 1980’s, tens of thousands of people, particularly youth, have been murdered in similar fashion in Punjab and all over the country. In Punjab, people of Hindu faith were pulled out of buses and brutally shot dead. The government propagated that it was the work of “Khalistani terrorists”. Years later, top officers of the Punjab Police have admitted that many of such killings were organised by police personnel under orders of the highest authority, to whip up hysteria against people of the Sikh faith. This helped create a climate wherein those in power could justify the cold blooded killing of Sikh youth in fake encounters, as well as in custodial killings.

Rivers of blood have flowed in Punjab with the armed forces carrying out the brutal assault on the Golden Temple in June 1984, followed by the attack on numerous other gurudwaras all over Punjab. Tens of thousands of innocent youth were simply picked up and murdered, and their bodies thrown into the canals. The jails of our country were filled with innocent people declared to be hard core terrorists. The government enacted the fascist TADA under which anyone could be arrested as a terrorist and kept in jail without trial.

 Who injected terrorism into Punjab? The ruling class has never tired of blaming Pakistan and Khalistani terrorists for injecting terrorism into India. This is to hide the role of the Indian ruling class in unleashing terrorism and state terrorism against our people.

People can never forget how in November 1984, thousands of Sikhs were brutally massacred in the heart of the capital, Delhi by killer mobs led by the top leaders of the Congress Party, with full police support. Thirty two years later, even after many changes of governments at the center, those who organised this massacre have not been punished.

The fact of the matter is that it is not merely some policemen, or goondas, or politicians who on their own, decided to unleash mayhem and violence and carry out terrorist massacres.

Looking back, it can be seen, that by the late seventies, the working class, peasantry, and broad masses of people were increasingly dissatisfied with their conditions. The illusions that had been nurtured by the ruling class and the Congress Party about the “socialistic pattern of society”, that it would ensure wellbeing of all were getting rudely shattered. At the same time, the contradiction amongst different sections of the ruling class for control over the state apparatus was sharpening. Simultaneously, the contention between the two superpowers over India and the other countries of the region had greatly intensified.

 

The decade of the seventies ended with a period of political instability following the lifting of National Emergency in 1977.  Two different coalition governments got formed and disbanded in less than three years. The big monopoly capitalists wanted to crush the mounting resistance of the exploited masses as well as put down discordant lobbies within the propertied classes.  They brought the Congress Party back to power in 1980 to implement the diabolical plan of communalising the political situation while swearing by secularism and national unity.  At the same time, they also sponsored the formation of BJP as the potential principal opposition to Congress within the Parliament.

Manipulation of the politics of Punjab was at the centre of the diabolical plan implemented by the big bourgeoisie in the eighties.  There were struggles for economic demands of workers, peasants and capitalist farmers, as well as for greater autonomy for Punjab within the Indian Union.  The central State carried out massive propaganda presenting the economic and political demands of the people of Punjab in communal colours, branding them as “Sikh extremism”.  The threat to their dominant position, which the big capitalists perceived, was projected as a threat to “national unity”. Imperialism and the Indianruling class covertly sponsored armed groups to spread anarchy and mayhem.

In such conditions, the Indian ruling class began the systematic unleashing of terrorism and state terrorism. The aim was to smash the unity of the working class and peasantry. They wanted to prevent the dissatisfaction of the people from taking a revolutionary course. Towards this end, they have deliberately inflamed passions by unleashing communal propaganda and state terrorism. 

Since then terrorism, state terrorism, and organising of communal massacres have become established as the preferred method of rule of the monopoly houses which dominate the Indian state and determine the orientation of the economy. It is these monopoly houses that have been setting the agenda for all the governments that have come to power. From Assam and Manipur in the North East, to Maharashtra and Gujarat in the West, Kashmir and Punjab in the North West, to Tamilnadu and Kerala in the South, there is no region of India where people have not been victims of terrorism and state terrorism. 

The struggle to put an end to terrorism and state terrorism, the struggle to punish those guilty of organising these crimes has been a difficult and long struggle. In the course of this struggle, it has become clear that it is the ruling class as a whole that has been behind terrorism and the communal massacres. The entire state machinery, the bureaucracy, the police, the armed forces and the judiciary, are behind it. That is why it doesn’t matter how many times the party in power has changed, those guilty of organising and unleashing communal massacres, and killings in fake encounters and custodial killings, never get punished.

The ruling class of our country has been aggressively pursuing the program of globalisation through privatisation and liberalisation to achieve its aim of becoming a global imperialist power. This is a course that has meant intensified exploitation, loot and plunder of the labour, land, and resources of our people, and the crushing of all opposition to this. The ruling class has deliberately stepped up unleashing of communal violence and state terrorism as an integral component of this all sided anti-social offensive against our people.

Taking forward the struggle to end communal violence and state terrorism, the struggle to ensure that those guilty of such monstrous crimes against our people are punished is the urgent call of the hour. The families of the victims of state terrorism, the human rights activists who have been fighting for justice, have raised the just demand that the law must be changed to ensure that those in positions of command, the top ministers, bureaucrats, police chiefs, and so on, under whose orders and supervision, monstrous crimes have been organised against the people, can be brought to trial and then given just punishment for their crimes. That is, the principle of Command Responsibility must be recognised in law.

The fact that the present Indian state has shown itself incapable of protecting its citizens, and on the contrary has been guilty of state terrorism, has posed the necessity for the working class and people of our country to step up the united struggle to establish a new state that will actually ensure prosperity and security for all.  The state we must establish must have the principle of command responsibility enshrined in law. It must be a state that is committed to protect every member of society. The Communist Ghadar Party of India calls on all progressive forces and justice loving people to unite and uncompromisingly oppose state terrorism!  Let us wage the struggle with the perspective of replacing the state of the bourgeoisie, which is the source of communal and fascist terror, with the rule of workers and peasants. 

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