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Letter to the editor

Staged shootings cast harsh light on police

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 8, 2007

AMRITSAR, India - As far as nearly everyone knew, Gurnam Singh Bandala was gunned down in a shootout with police 13 years ago during the waning days of an uprising by Sikh separatists.

That is, until Bandala turned up alive, living as a preacher outside this northern Indian city.

"It's the perfect cover, being dead, " says Bandala, the classic image of a towering Sikh with his white robe, deep blue turban and long gray beard.

Authorities now believe a farmer was killed by police so they could present his body as Bandala's and collect a $60, 000 bounty. "I thought I was so lucky, " Bandala said. "(But) there was no luck. There was murder."

Bandala's re-emergence is one of nearly a dozen similar cases reviewed by the AP that have surfaced in India. The faked police shootouts have shaken an already troubled justice system in a country that touts itself as a rights-respecting democracy where the rule of law prevails.

Former police officials and human rights activists say the encounters are the brutal result of a system dominated by poorly educated, badly trained and corruptible cops, dirty politicians and stagnated courts where justice can be delayed for years.

"Because cases take years to be settled, because witnesses don't show up, because bribes are paid, criminals get away. So the police resort to shortcuts, " says Sankar Sen, a former police officer.

The exact number of fake encounters is impossible to determine. Police officials acknowledge a handful over the past two decades and say they are isolated cases. But former and current officers say the problem is more widespread.

Bandala already was in hiding for a decade when he read, in July 1994, about his own death in a local newspaper. He worried at first, "then I realized the police wouldn't be chasing me anymore, " he said.

At the same time, a woman who lived a few villages over started looking for her husband, Sukhpal Singh, who was taken away by police. "He disappeared like a ghost, " says his widow, Dalbir Kaur. But authorities now believe that he was killed in Bandala's place.

[Last modified June 8, 2007, 01:34:23]