43 Indian police officers given reduced sentence for murdering 10 Sikhs in 1991

A long-running case against dozens of Uttar Pradesh police officers has led to 43 of them being given reduced sentences for the “fake encounter” deaths of 10 Sikh men, six years after 47 officers were found guilty for the killings.

Presiding judges Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Saroj Yadav reduced the 2016 conviction from “murder” to “culpable homicide” for the officers in an Allahabad High Court hearing on 15th December. The reduction came even after most the officers have already benefitted from India’s corrupt legal system which has helped keep nearly all of them free since 1991. The reduction means the men were given just seven years in prison each instead of life, for murders which were described as “barbaric and inhuman killing of the innocent persons” in court only last June, as reported by Sikh PA.

A transcript of what was said about the reduction in court stated the judges believed there was “no ill-will between the accused and those killed. The accused were public servants and their object was the advancement of public justice”.  This will outrage countless Sikhs, many of whom have long followed this case as a black-and-white example of the “fake encounter” murders which were the main way the killings of India’s Sikh genocide were carried out in the 80s-90s. The killings in 1991 came after police halted a bus taking Sikhs on a religious trip to a Gurdwara. Officers randomly took 10 men and one Sikh child and later claimed three separate incidents occurred which forced them to fire on the Sikh men, leading to their deaths. No evidence of any such incidents exists, with it being well known at a grassroots level the officers involved carried out “fake encounter” killings on them.

In 2016, 47 men linked with the case were found guilty of crimes connected to this incident. It is unclear if all are police officers although it is now known at least 43 of them are. 12 of the 47 were not imprisoned at any point, and instead given immediate bail in 2016 due to their elderly age and/or physical ailments. It is believed 35 of the murderers have since been imprisoned, although it is well known within the Indian judicial system that government affiliated detainees are often given shocking levels of freedom when they are meant to be locked up. Sikh PA last covered the case when it was revealed that 34 of the officers were denied bail. The change in the charge means it is possible some of those men that may have been imprisoned in 2016 before they were officially sentenced would be immediately made free due to the fact they have completed approximately six years of a seven year sentence already.

In June of this year Indian media also reported that one child was murdered along with the 10 Sikh men. This detail is missing from recent media coverage on this case. Recent Indian media reports on the incident are now also claiming that some of the Sikh men were linked to terror activities under the notorious TADA act. This information was missing from previous reporting on the case, which has caught the attention of Sikhs around the world and others following India’s atrocious human rights record.

Speaking on the case, Sikh Press Association Senior Press Officer Jasveer Singh said, “This case is a great example of why many eel justice for the Sikh genocide cannot come via the Indian judicial system.

“The case took 25-years to find officers guilty of a crime whole communities knew they were responsible for. Even being found guilty was not enough to put all of these men behind bars, and for those that have been, they now serve a reduced sentence which means some may be released immediately.

“The presiding judges threw out much of what previous courts had settled on, and instead tried to portray these officers as simply making a mistake in the pursuit of justice. What they actually did was act as a hit-squad for a tyrannical government that wanted to eradicate Sikh activism by any means.

“This outcome is a disgrace but a fair reflection of how India treats its Sikh community, who make up approximately 2% of the population.”