Abandoned by State, suicide was the only option for Sandhu:

He said the present Sikh leadership which rules the state because of the suppression of terrorism by the police “cannot really be expected to lift a finger” for those who put their lives and those of their families in jeopardy to bring about peace.

Sandhu, who was appointed SSP of Tarn Taran by Gill at the height of militancy, faced more than 40 court cases of excesses and killings in stage-managed encounters. He left behind a suicide note saying, “It is better to die than to live a life of humiliation.”

Gill said it was not fear that drove Sandhu to death, but ingratitude of the people and the State. The terrorists and their front men, having lost the battle for Khalistan through the force of arms, exploited the human rights angle to target officers.

“The nation he fought to defend, the people for whom he risked his life, simply turned away in indifference or joined the chorus against him without checking the merits of the evidence and without giving him the opportunity of a fair trial,” Gill said.

Stating that the state Sandhu served and saved participated in his humiliation, Gill pointed out that Guru Granth Sahib speaks of ingratitude as the greatest sin and asked the “the leaders of Punjab” to remember the teachings of the Gurus.”

Sandhu was jailed without trial for an extended period and an attack was engineered on him inside the jail. “One does not know what happened to his attackers. They have possibly been promoted or been presented with saropas,” the former DGP said.

Gill said, “No people who treat their heroes as we have done can expect to survive. All hope will die when men of courage began to say, like Josh Malihabadi, Buzdilon ke ishq mein, shaida mujhe kyon kar kiya/Iss namard desh mein paida mujhe kyon kar kiya”.

Criticising those who were heading the self-righteous witch-hunt against officers like Sandhu, Gill wondered “where were they hiding for ten years when terrorists roamed free.” The judiciary remained paralysed and the Press worked on the terrorists diktat, he added.

The former DGP said that before Sandhu was posted at Tarn Taran, no police officer was willing to go there. Tarn Taran was spoken of as “the rocket that would propel Punjab out of the Indian Union” because of “absolute” terrorists’ influence.

Sandhu was “a hair’s breadth away from death throughout his tenure,” but he never compromised, and yet achieved “everything I could hope for.” Had the country lost control over Tarn Taran, Punjab’s secession would have become inevitable, Gill said.

Gill said that “an utterly compromised human rights lobby,” which understood the nuts and bolts of the judicial system and knew the methods of orchestration of media, was distorting and manipulating the legal process by carrying out a sustained campaign against officers like Sandhu.

Effective defence in such a situation required a great deal of money to buy the best legal advice but the state abandoned these officers, denying them competent legal defence on the basis of rules framed a century ago.