Sri Guru Granth Sahib warns the proud and the arrogant of the ultimate reality of death:
| ਸਿਰ ਕੰਪਿਓ ਪਗ ਡਗਮਗੇ ਨੈਨ ਜੋਤਿ ਤੇ ਹੀਨ ॥ |
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| The head shakes, the feet stagger, and the eyes become dull and weak. |
| ਕਹ ਨਾਨਕ ਇਹ ਬਿਧਿ ਭਈ ਤਊ ਨ ਹਰਿ ਰਸਿ ਲੀਨ ॥੪੭॥ |
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| Says Nanak, this is your condition. And even now, you have not savored the sublime essence of the Lord. ((47)) |
This verse of the Ninth Guru applies directly to
KPS Gill, the Ex Director General of Police in Punjab during the dark period of 1980-90s. The Indian politicians and newspapers hail him as "
Supercop" but the people of Punjab remember him as the devil who snatched away their young sons in extra-judicial killings famously known as the "
Fake encounters".
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| Sadhavi Khosla with KPS Gill on his Death Bed |
Kanwar Pal Singh Gill (1934/35 – 26 May 2017) was an Indian police officer. He was admitted to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi on May 18, 2017. Gill, who finally got done in by kidneys that failed him (he was on dialysis and spent the last six days in an intensive care unit), was loved by his subordinates but hated by public. He had been suffering from Peritonitis but died of sudden cardiac arrest due to cardiac arrhythmia at 2:55 PM on 26 May 2017.
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| Cremation of aging KPS Gill |
The Sikh clergy refused to participate in his last rites. He was cremated with Indian state honors but the irony of the fact is that his family must have recited the above verse as it is customary to recite the Sloks of the 9th Guru,
Cop who recited Shakespeare during Torture
During this era when Sikh militancy in the Khalistan movement were active in Punjab, there were reports of human rights violations in the Punjab region. Amnesty International reported that, from 1983 to 1994, armed groups struggling to form an independent Sikh state, assassinating perpetrators of the 1984 Sikh pogroms or Congress Party members, and taking hostages. It further reported that the police responded with a "crackdown", illegally detaining, torturing and killing "hundreds of young men".
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| Fake encounter of Sikhs by Indian Police |
Gill was the mastermind of these extra-judicial killings of Sikh youth between the ages of 15-35 in rural Punjab. His reign of state-sponsored terror eliminated over 20,000 Sikh youths in the border districts alone.
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| Gill supervising the "Fake Encounter" |
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that the Indian Police indulged in serious human rights violations against "tens of thousands". HRW report in 1991 described the security forces using “increasingly brutal methods to stem the militant movement, resulting in widespread human rights violations.” Thousands of civilians and suspected militants were summarily executed in staged "encounter" killings. Many "disappeared" while in police custody and thousands were detained without trial and subjected to torture. The post-1991 period coincides with Gill’s second tenure as Director General of Punjab police. It is this period that witnessed the most serious escalation of violence.
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| Mass Murders of Sikh Youth in Punjab |
In 1993, The New York Times reported, the people of Punjab no longer feared the Sikh "rebels or gangs", but instead feared the army and police. Patricia Gossman describes Gill as having a “goal to eliminate, not merely arrest, militant Sikh leaders and their family members.
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| Gill inspecting "Fake Encounter" |
KPS Gill also expanded a bounty system of rewards for police who killed known militants – a practice that encouraged the police to resort to extrajudicial executions and disappearances. The police were awarded financially for killing militants. “
India’s central government created a special fund to finance Punjab’s death squads, to pay the network of informants who provided information about militants and those suspected of supporting militants, and to reward police who captured and killed them”.
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| Gill rewarding Gurmeet "Pinky" for fake encounters |
The reward was about 50,000 rupees ($1,670). In an article in
India Today on 15 October 1992 it was written that "the rush of claiming cash rewards is turning police into mercenaries. Besides the rewards for killing militants (annual outlay for the purpose: Rs 1.13 crore [$338,000]), the department gives 'unannounced rewards' for killing unlisted militants".
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| Indian Police chillingly celebrating a kill |
Disappearance of Khalra
Jaswant Singh Khalra was a human rights activist who documented the fake encounters in the border district of Punjab. Jaswant Singh Khalra discovered files from the municipal corporation of the city of Amritsar which contained the names, age, address of those who had been killed and later burned by the Police. Further research revealed other cases in 3 other districts in Punjab, increasing the list by thousands. He published his report in Canada after meeting the Canadian parliamentarians.
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| Khalra Report in Canadian Parliament |
Gill threatened Khalra that he himself would be made a missing person soon. Khalra was taken into custody by Punjab Police on 6 September 1995 upon his return to India. Human Rights Watch reported that an 11 September 1995 writ of habeas corpus from the Supreme Court was presented to Gill, and officials denied that police had detained him.
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| The "killing Machine" of Indian "Supercop" |
In 2005, Special Police Officer Kuldeep Singh testified in court that in October 1995, after Khalra had been beaten and tortured, and bore the signs of torture on his body, then DGP Gill visited Khalra at SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu's home. He further testified that Gill remained with Khalra in the room for "half an hour", that a few days later Khalra was killed, and finally that on the way back to Jhabal police station after disposing of the body, he was told that Khalra could have saved himself if he had listened to the advice of Gill.
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| "Fake Encounter of a Sikh" |
In 2003,
Khushwant Singh, author of A History of the Sikhs, wrote a review of Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab for The Tribune. Titled "
K. P. S. Gill you have questions to answer", the review said that he supported Gill's use of extrajudicial methods to "stamp out terrorism" as the judicial system was in a state of collapse due to judges being too frightened to rule against the "terrorists." He also said that "
There were others like Khalra who were disposed of because the police did not like them." and "
It is spine-chilling." Khushwant Singh reported that when asked for comment, Gill's response was "
Rubbish."
Sexual Harassment of Female Colleagues
An Indian Administrative Service (IAS) female officer named
Rupan Deol Bajaj filed a complaint against Gill for, in 1988, "patting" her "posterior" at a party where he was alleged to be drunk. In August 1996, he was convicted under Section 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) and Section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult a lady), generally summarized as sexual harassment.
Gill was sentenced to pay a fine of Rs 200,000 and to suffer three months rigorous imprisonment, followed by two months' ordinary imprisonment, and finally to serve three years of probation. After final appeals before the Supreme Court in July 2005, the conviction was upheld but the jail sentences were reduced to probation. The victim had declined to accept the monetary compensation, and the court ordered that it be donated to women's organisations
No Tears for KPS Gill in Punjab
Gill was glorified and became a celebrity for ending Sikh extremism and his admirers continue seeing him as a man who resolutely fought against terrorism. Not only did ordinary Sikhs suffer at the hands of the police, political suspects were killed in staged shootouts through extra-judicial means in the name of so-called war on terror. Women had suffered custodial rapes. Those involved in butchery were given out-of-turn promotions and bravery awards. Thousands of ageing parents are still searching for answers to what happened to their sons.
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| Sikh Parents searching for their son |
Throughout this period, Gill and his police force enjoyed the backing of the Indian state that passed draconian anti-terror laws and supplied unaccounted funds to crush the insurgency. Gill became a media darling and was often praised as “Supercop” by political parties ranging from the left to the right.
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| KPS Gill - Supercop or Culprit of Mass Genocide |
To counter all this, some might suggest that Gill was an intellectual who loved poetry and also promoted culture. But keep in mind that Hitler too was a painter who loved architecture, but that part of his personality remains rightfully eclipsed because of his crimes against humanity.
Apart from some anti-Sikh elements in Indian National Congress and BJP, no one is shedding a single tear for a demonic man who terrorized the rural Punjab and was responsible for illegal killing of thousands of its youth.
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| Celebrating achievements of KPS Gill |
References
- http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/confessions-of-a-killer-cop/296046
- http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/witnessed-50-fake-encounters-police-cat-pinky/167204.html
- http://www.straight.com/news/916021/gurpreet-singh-kps-kalluri-how-barbarity-reinforces-indias-majoritarian-democracy
- http://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/the-cop-who-could-recite-shakespeare-wield-torture-implements-the-kps-gill-i-knew/story-IL9C7yZ3LsU5s3WYGi8oaJ.html
- http://www.sikh24.com/2017/05/26/a-busy-day-for-the-angels-of-death-as-kps-gill-passes-away/#.WTL9MOvyucw
- https://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/india1007/5.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanwar_Pal_Singh_Gill
- http://manvirsingh.blogspot.com/2013/07/fake-encounters-in-panjab.html
- http://sikhsiyasat.net/2017/04/04/former-dgp-kps-gills-scribe-punjab-problem-bundle-lies-distortion-kanwar-pal-singh/
- http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-supercop-kps-gill-laid-to-rest-with-full-state-honours-2453925
Gill was sentenced to pay a fine of Rs 200,000 and to suffer three months rigorous imprisonment, followed by two months' ordinary imprisonment, and finally to serve three years of probation. After final appeals before the Supreme Court in July 2005, the conviction was upheld but the jail sentences were reduced to probation. The victim had declined to accept the monetary compensation, and the court ordered that it be donated to women's organisations
He saved the indian nation and is a hero
ReplyDeleteOh shut the fuck up you messed up moron. He was single handedly responsible for the death of thousands of innocents. I don't know how that makes someone a hero. Get your brain checked up!!
DeleteMorons like you have no clue what the word 'hero' even means! A murderer is not a hero
DeleteThose who argue that a genocide was morally excusable or necessary, need to undertand that their comments may constitute incitement to genocide, which is criminalized under international criminal law. Can a genocide ever be justified?
DeleteAccording to W. Michael Reisman, "in many of the most hideous international crimes, many of the individuals who are directly responsible operate within a cultural universe that inverts our morality and elevates their actions to the highest form of group, tribe, or national defense".
Bettina Arnold observed, "It is one of the terrible ironies of the systematic extermination of one people by another that its justification is considered necessary."
According to the Encylopedia of Genocide, "There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race."
My question to people who hate Gill and compare him to Hitler. He did not indiscriminately kill all Sikhs. If that had been the case, Punjab and Rest of India should have been devoid of Sikhs. He was the scourge of those Sikhs that dared to terrorise innocent citizens of Punjab. In an ideal world, one can go the judicial way (but considering how inept, corrupt and slow our courts are), extra judicial killings were the way to go. The author harps about unwarranted killings. What percent of these were unjustified - 1%, 2%, 5%? When a thorn is removing other unwanted thorns, these can be considered to be unfortunate deaths which ideally could have been avoided. But history will always remember the great Sardar as someone who brought back peace to Punjabi Sikhs and Punjabi Hindus.
ReplyDeleteHe was a madarchod and will always be remembered as a madarchod
DeleteButcher gill
DeleteNow go and explain this to each of thousands of parents whose innocent sons were killed for promotions and money.
DeleteKps gill mother fucker
ReplyDeleteAnyone who remembers him as a hero, hasn't seen any harm to his own family n loved ones. He was a disgrace to humanity n so is anyone who hails him as a hero. I'd piss on his dead body n grave if I could
ReplyDeleteHe shall be rotting in hell and to those who think that he was a hero, just remember they will suffer just like the innocent people, Gill dealt with.
ReplyDelete