Is This Justice ?

[Greater-Punjab]

This week, Punjab witnessed how the justice dispensing system works in real life. Not one right thinking person in India, no matter to which religion he belongs, will ever deny that the Beant Singh-KPS Gill regime was a regime of gross human rights violations and the government was the most undemocratically elected in the history of Punjab. Only six percent of the people of Punjab had voted for a Congress government and Beant Singh was the handpicked choice of the Indian establishment, as was KPS Gill. When Beant Singh was killed in 1995, the action was actually a reaction. Few tears were shed for the man, and such was the real nature of the r e l a t i o n s h i p between two human rights violators that even KPS Gill as the Director General of Police did not order a separate inquiry. Not one policeman was acted against, not one officer shifted or transferred and no demands for a judicial probe made. The Indian establishment was least interested in finding out how the most protected chief minister's security was breached. But all it needed to do that was a resolve that the man whose prime business has become to kill innocent Sikh youth needs to meet justice. Beant Singh was ripped apart on August 31, 1995. His Man Friday KPS Gill was later convicted of crimes which are loathe for any human soul — pinching women's bottoms in public. What lesser men could the Indian establishment find to annihilate the Sikhs? But while this was a political murder, and the defence counsel of the convicted made it clear in the CBI court that the murder of

Beant Singh was 'divine justice', that his regime was worse than the Mughal rule, and that those who committed the murder were avenging the dishonor of an entire community. Kudos to Balwant Singh and Jagtar Singh Hawara who have refused to even appeal against the death sentence. Pratibha Patil's dossier will have no more applications from the Sikhs and the one from Prof Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar will be enough to embarrass the Indian regime, if it knows how to be embarrassed at all.

But then, the same justice dispensing system is being exposed day after day in the case of Dera Sacha Sauda where it takes the CBI years and a directive from the High Court to submit its charge sheet clearly stating that Gurmeet Ram

Rahim was a rapist and a murderer. The fact that the CBI has not asked for his arrest, and the kidglove treatment extended by the Punjab Police cops in the theatrical arrest and release of the dera head in Sirsa a day earlier shows that the Indian establishment is hell bent on protecting its agents who are ready to penetrate into Sikh faith and forever conspire to weaken the religion. In times like these, it is all the more important that the Sikh community realizes the

forces that are working to safeguard the interests of the community and those who are stabbing it in the back.

It is also time that the organizations like the SGPC and the great institution of the Akal Takht and the Sikh clergy guide the Sikh quom by acting not in the interests of the political masters whose one point aim is to rule and mint wealth rather than uphold the community's interests in the face of the combined might of the Hindutva forces and the anti-Sikh lobby.