A Window To Perceptive Journalism

Punjab Police’s bloody homage to
Shaheed Bhagat Singh:
The Kuljit Singh Dhatt case

S P Singh

As millions across the country trooped into air conditioned cinema halls in mass appreciation of the martyrdom of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the martyr’s niece so far hasn’t found time to watch any of the five odd movies. She is busy knocking at the police’s doors, fearing a threat to her and her family members’ lives, even as the Shaheed’s worried sister Parkash Kaur is losing all hope of securing justice after losing a son-in-law in a fake encounter.

Spending every moment of their lives under threat, Gurjit Kaur, daughter of Parkash Kaur, and her husband Harbhajan Singh spent a scary night on May 30, 2002 when some 20-odd armed men barged into their courtyard in village Ambala Jattan of Dasuya in Hoshiarpur, threatened to murder Harbhajan and openly shouted that the family has not been able to do anything about the earlier “murder” of Harbhajan’s brother.

But for Parkash Kaur, now in Canada, the dark night started some 17 years earlier. “And I see no light even in future but I am fighting. Bhagat Singh dies for justice knowing fully well that the battle for it was too long. But it is a shame that the benefits of the freedom that his ilk won have still to percolate down to the people.”

Harbhajan’s brother Kuljit Singh Dhatt was killed in a police encounter in 1989, and Parkash Kaur since has maintained that it was a fake encounter.

It should have taken Parkash Kaur a day to register an FIR, but she had to fight her way through a maze of justice-delivery-channels, finally managing to get the case registered after seven years and repeated directions from the Supreme Court.

Parkash Kaur’s daughter Gurjit Kaur, married to the brother of Kuljit Singh, said the defence’s strategy seems to be shocking in this case: Keep waiting and delay the case till everyone simply dies of old age!

Bhagat Singh’s younger brother Rajinder Singh who used to sit on dharna to get the case registered, died in 1994, years before the police agreed to file an FIR.

“Of the two witnesses, Kuldip Singh has already died after waiting for 11 years for the regular trial to start. The second crucial witness Gurmit Singh, 75, is a completely broken man since his son was murdered. He has accused that his son was murdered only because of his being a witness in the Dhatt case. Another witness Gurmail Singh of Garhi village is above 85 years and has already suffered a heart attack, while yet another Piara Singh is 85. I am myself in my early 80s,” Parkash Kaur said.

Harbhajan Singh said, “Even to get here took years. After the July 1989 death of Kuljit Singh, we went to Supreme Court in September. Parkash Kaur was invariably sitting on  a dharna either at SSP’s office or at DIG’S.

In March 1990, Supreme Court, in an extra-ordinary order, directed that a Commission be set up for inquiry. But instead of three months’ stipulated time, the Commission took three-and-a-half years,”Gurjit Kaur said.  

On several occasions, the Commission’s work was obstructed as the police used to pick up the witnesses but Parkash Kaur, her energy completely sapped by climbing four flights of stairs day after day, kept up the fight, at times even telling the probe judge bluntly to close the trial if he was not being allowed to carry on.

Finally, when the report went to the apex court, it came down with a heavy hand. Suspend all five officials found guilty, it ordered. The five were then SP Operations Surinder Pal Singh Basra, DSP Dasuya Ajit Singh Sandhu, SHO Dasuya Jaspal Singh, SHO Tanda Sardool Singh and SHO Garhdiwala Sita Ram.

“We used to travel from different cities to Delhi for the court hearings as there was always the danger that all of us would be collectively eliminated if we went together. That fear is still there,” Harbhajan Singh said.

After the SC directed registration of an FIR, the case started, but had not reached anywhere when the cops went to the High Court plead that sanction for their prosecution should have come from the Centre.

Since then, the case is lingering on.

“And that is why perhaps we are lingering on. We are just refusing to die despite my old age and bad health. But now I think some day, the kafaquesque functioning of legal system will succeed and outlive me. But people would be happy watching Bhagat Singh movies, and living in a delirium that the country is independent,” said a bitter Harbhajan Singh. So is he giving up the fight? “Did Bhagat Singh give up?” he asks.■

The Indian Express 
June 16, 2002

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