The Punjab Police is no longer the force to reckon with as it once used to be under Julio Francis Ribeiro and Kanwar Pal Singh Gill.
During a private conversation in January, a recently retired senior Punjab Police officer who spent much of his career fighting terrorism in this border state very gravely and prophetically remarked, “The situation is really going to get bad. Just watch.” Sure enough, late last month, Punjab witnessed a widely reported incident reminiscent of the dark days of terrorism in the country’s grain bowl once better known for its saints and soldiers.
On 23 February, a 29-year-old once shaven nobody, who until only last year resided and worked in Dubai, evoked the abject surrender of the government without firing a bullet. Leading a band of gun wielding and sword brandishing unruly youth, Amritpal Singh, leader of the radical Waris Punjab De, laid siege to a police station in Amritsar district’s border town of Ajnala and got the police to release his supporter who had been arrested for allegedly kidnapping and beating a person. Six policemen including a Superintendent of Police were injured when Amritpal and his armed militia clashed with an infantry battalion-strength (600) policemen after breaking barricades and trying to force their entry into the police station.
Within an hour, the police on orders from the state’s political executive buckled. The accused was released the following day after the government withdrew the FIR, thus making nonsense of the rule of law.
Parallels are already being drawn between Amritpal and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the latter a fiery speaker who once headed a seminary. Like Bhindranwale, Amritpal too is baptised and dresses in medieval era clothes; dons a revolver; is accompanied by similarly dressed semi-educated rural/semi-rural folk who brazenly display guns, wear bullet belts on their chests and brandish unsheathed swords. Like Bhindranwale, Amritpal too enjoys playing victim, makes rhetorical speeches of perceived injustice and discrimination in “Hindu India” and openly espouses a romanticised vision of a separate Sikh state, “khalistan”. Like Bhindranwale, who was in his early 30s when he had arrived on the politico-religious scene in Punjab a little over four decades ago, Amritpal will turn 30 this year.
Bhindranwale, an orator with little formal education, had originally been propped by the Congress party to counter the then forever agitating Akali Dal. However, he had quickly caught the imagination of a section of his co-religionists and would roam the state free and fearless accompanied with an armed militia spewing venom and contempt against both the country and a certain community. After failing to win an electoral position in the financially-rich SGPC, which otherwise serves as the repository and powerhouse of the Akali Dal, Bhindranwale had eventually made the Akal Takht (temporal seat of the Sikhs), located about 100 meters from the Harmandir Sahib (the sanctum sanctorum), his abode from where he conducted a ruthless and wilful reign of terror while running a parallel government. He was eventually killed in a hastily planned short-notice bloody military action named Operation Bluestar.
For some time now Punjab has been slowly and surely sliding a downward spiral. The Ajnala incident, the most prominent so far, has been preceded by provocative speeches. On at least one occasion, Amritpal violently first damaged and then set afire sofas placed in a prominent gurdwara in Jalandhar for senior citizens. His rationale: sitting on sofas in a gurdwara violates Sikh tenets. More seriously, a supporter of his radical organisation personally known to Amritpal was involved in killing the Shiv Sena leader in Amritsar last November.
The fact that radical groups in Canada, the US, UK and Australia are increasingly becoming vocal and engaging in hate-India and communal campaigns serve as an encouragement to the likes of Amritpal and his ilk. This trend is not likely to cease in the immediate future. Rather, it will continue to fuel disaffection in a state where a large percentage of impressionable youth are mostly distracted by social media; are either unemployable or unable to find jobs; endear themselves easily to macho and radical-like symbols such as music promoting violence and defiance, to guns, drugs and a romanticised vision of the “perfect life” in Canada.
The Centre, having caved into an over the year-long agitation against farm laws that was mainly spearheaded by farmers from Punjab, seem not to have the stomach to take firm action in the state. But then, law and order is first and foremost a State subject. Direct action by the Centre will mean interference in an Opposition-ruled state which is likely to complicate and escalate an already challenging situation.
The state, stricken by a severe poverty of leadership, has an administratively inexperienced Chief Minister. Like almost all Chief Ministers belonging to New Delhi-based nationally-recognised political parties who have little choice but to pander to their respective “high commands”, the situation is no different with Bhagwant Mann who is perceived to take his bidding from AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal.
However, it does not help that Bhagwant Mann and his cabinet lack political and administrative experience because it compels greater dependency on their party leadership (Kejriwal). But since Kejriwal’s jurisdiction as Chief Minister of Delhi does not extend to the police (apart from some other key subjects since Delhi is a union territory), the latter has no real exposure of handling law and order issues. This leaves a severely experience-handicapped Bhagwant Mann practically on his own in this vital field.
But then here is his next problem. The Punjab Police is no longer the force to reckon with as it once used to be under Julio Francis Ribeiro and Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, both of who had resurrected an until then ill-led, ill-trained and ill-equipped Punjab Police into a reasonably efficient (and unfortunately also corrupt) force. All the young and daring IPS and PPS officers who used to lead from the front during the era of terrorism have since retired. The current cadre of police officers in Punjab comprise either a post-terrorism generation or those who were in their infancy during the phase of terrorism in Punjab. Most inspire little confidence and are economical in their leadership skills.
Consider the following: (i) The largely slothful and corrupt force that it is today was unable to secure the Prime Minister of the country during his visit to the state in January last year when Congress leader Charanjit Channi was Chief Minister. (ii) Police bodyguards could not prevent the daylight killing of Shubdeep Singh Sidhu alias Moosewala, a singer who had caught the imagination of many youth in the state with his acerbic lyrics. The reverberation of his killing was felt in the subsequent Sangrur Lok Sabha byelection in which radical leader Simranjit Singh Maan, an advocate for a “khalistan”, won. This constituency was earlier represented by Bhagwant Mann. (iii) Then last November Punjab policemen literally ran helter-skelter when a lone assassin rained bullets on a Shiv Sena leader in Amritsar in broad daylight. (iv) More recently, last month, a posse of indifferent policemen watched mutely when four naked sword wielding men badly injured a woman witness in a murder case right outside a district court complex in Ferozepur. An inert police leadership has not deemed it fit to take action against such acts of criminal unprofessionalism.
In the meantime, knights of falsehood such as Amritpal continue to radicalise youth in a state where people even in the best of times have always had a grudging admiration for the dacoit. A false narrative centred around identity politics, victimhood (“Sikhs are slaves”), hate-India mongering and the like is on the increase. Clearly, Punjab’s aam aadmi is in for troubled times in a state bordered by a neighbour that is characterised by compulsive hostility towards India.
Dinesh Kumar is a senior journalist.