Don't push Punjab to the brink

Almost two years ago, the then President Pratibha  Patil rejected the mercy petition of Khalistani terrorist Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, accused of killing a dozen people on Raisina Road in New Delhi. This led to breast beating by a section of hardliners as well as liberal leaders in Punjab who wanted their place in the sun for a while. The Akali Dal also did lip service and demanded the customary clemency but never pushed the issue beyond a point. 

Then it was the Beant Singh assassin Balwant Singh Rajoana who hogged the limelight last year, days after the SAD-BJP government came to power in March 2012. A lower court fixed the date for the hanging and asked Punjab government to comply with the orders. 

There was frenzy all over the state with the same police officers known for their “bullet for bullet” theory, making all attempts to save Rajoana who wanted to be hanged and called a “martyr”,  has no remorse or has never challenged the orders of the court convicting him.

Now, it is back to Bhullar as the Supreme Court has rejected his plea challenging the rejection of mercy petition and claiming that he has been in jail for too long a period and this is a ground not to give capital punishment. Akali Dal is back demanding that the government save Bhullar, whose name has been prefixed by Professor. 

No one knows what kind of Professor Bhullar was but the resolution of the Core Committee of Akali Dal described the rejection of the petition by Supreme Court for commuting the death sentence of  “Professor”  Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar as “deeply painful, unfortunate and worrying”. 

Ironically, the statement of the Akali Dal comes at a time when no one wants to remember the dark chapter in Punjab’s history in the 1980s and the early 90s. Terrorism only led to misery for every Punjabi and 20 years after it has come to an end, politics on periodic mercy pleas and raking up the issue could play with the sentiments of the younger generation. 

Recently, former Punjab DGP, KPS Gill was in Chandigarh to deliver a lecture and he advocated need for a law which makes sympathy with such causes an offence, something which was done in post Nazi Germany. Gill, credited for uprooting terrorism from Punjab along with his officers, would surely say that SAD coming to defence of Bhullar, is an act which should have at best been avoided. 

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and party president and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal will soon meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and urge them “to operationalise the post-judicial   mechanism  of statesmanship in order to avoid even at this stage  any steps that may pose a threat to peace and communal harmony in the country in general and Punjab in particular.” 

What is troublesome is that whenever execution becomes imminent, there are petitions and counter petitions for the condemned militants. Perhaps that could be the reason why Ajmal Kasab and then Afzal Guru were hanged in secrecy. I am not a champion of death sentence nor do I endorse it, but certainly I am against politicizing the issue which is being done right now. Thankfully, the case of Kasab was not politicized because he hailed from Pakistan and Guru only got lip sympathy in Jammu and Kashmir.

Bhullar and Rajoana should be punished as per law. But then, the legal system has to act swiftly and decisively in other cases also. The perception in Punjab is that the legal system could not punish those accused of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the Delhi and rest of the country. Can anyone defend the fact that Jagdish Tytler’s case is still in the courts 29 years after the riots. You either acquit him or punish him. Similarly, is the case of Sajjan Kumar—still going on. Then, no one knows if anyone has been convicted for the 1984 riots in rest of the country.  Tytler’s case lingers on — almost 3 decades have passed and no one knows how many decades more are required to reach a logical conclusion. This is a travesty of law — doing injustice to both the victims and even the accused. 

Referring to the apex court decision on Bhullar and the delay in Tytler’s trial, Akali Dal observed that the decision “is bound to invite parallels with the failure of the Delhi and Union governments to ensure exemplary punishments to those guilty of cold-blooded massacre of thousands of innocent Sikhs in Delhi and other parts of the country in 1984. 

Killers in fact are not only roaming free but have even by rewarded with plum political posts. Against this back-ground, the rejection of petition in Professor Bhullar’s case will strengthen the perception among the Sikh masses that two separate sets of  laws operated in the country and that they have been subjected to discriminatory treatment even in the courts of justice.” 

Police officials who fought terrorism throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s say that all the ingredients of radicalization and militancy exist in the State even today. 

They cite mixing of religion and politics, increasing relevance of the radical groups and their new role as lobbyists for the radical cause and a hostile neighbour as factors which could help revive the embers which were doused after great efforts.

Unemployment on a large scale, drug abuse, diminishing returns from agriculture and the failure to bring in the second green revolution could be the other contributory factors. What has added fuel to fire in recent months and years is the reach of social networking sites and the new media through which radicalization is taking place at a much faster place.  Such a powerful medium did not exist in the 1980s and early 90s and clearly intelligence and police officials are worried about its impact.

There are hundreds of websites, blogs and facebook pages which extol the terrorists of yesteryears and carry their pictures, life sketches and glorify their acts of terror, portraying the government in extremely poor light. The Government can do little about it as they are hosted from foreign countries and even if you ban one, they change the domain name and appear again. There are websites which ask for donations for the cause of a separate state and even ask for as little as $5 as contribution. 

The case of Rajoana and Bhullar was fought not only through official channels but also through the cyber world where a few thousand “liked” the page on the assassin and added their comments on it. 

There were several incidents in the recent past which clearly suggested that the radicals can mobilise the people of Punjab with little or no effort. Controversy on the voting rights of the Sehejdhari Sikhs, killing of Sant Ramanand of Dera Sachkhand in Vienna in 2009 and before that the controversy involving Dera Sacha Sauda’s Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim in 2007 led to widespread disturbance. 

The radical elements are waiting on the fringes as the Shiromani Akali Dal occupies the main political space in the state. But overlooking the warning signals could prove to be counterproductive and it is here that the ruling party in Punjab will have to be on guard.

ashukla.mail@gmail.com