Violence breeds violence in Sikh enclave

The Sikhs claim these are an attempt to drive them out from the district they have made their own through hard work. They feel they are being selectively targeted because they are in the forefront of the movement to prevent Udham Singh Nagar from becoming part of the proposed Uttaranchal state. The killings, they believe, are part of an attempt to drive them away and ensure there are no hindrances to the formation of the new state.

With no arrests made so far, the community has retaliated in a frightening fashion. In the past 10 days two `suspicious characters’ have been lynched by mobs comprising mainly Sikhs. While the administration claims the two men were innocent victims, the community claims the implements recovered from the two implicate them in the killings.

In each case the administration claims that the victims, and a few other persons handed over after being caught in suspicious circumstances, are mentally deranged. The community contests the claim and says the admninistration is collaborating in the attacks and the `madman’ tag is a convenient way of letting the perpetrators go free.

The first incident, on the night of April 9, occurred at Sita Rampur village. Three members of a family — Baldev Singh, his wife Rajinder and daughter Supreet Kaur — were found found dead. Spades were used to kill them.

The police initially thought it to be a family feud. But on May 4, the most brutal of the killings forced them to think again. Nine-year-old Priyanka, her brother five-year-old Beant, her mother Sukhjinder, her father Pargat Singh, Pargat’s brother and parents were sleeping outside their farmhouse in Dhakkian Gulabon village.

Priyanka says she woke up well after midnight to find some men in black `baniyans’, attacking her family. The children were left alone as they brutally beat up the adults leaving them for dead. Only Pargat and Sukhjinder were still alive. They were taken to hospital, where Pargat died.

On June 23, Harbans Singh of Kharmasi village was mudered and his wife Kulwant and son Narinder were badly injured. Finally, after the killing of Sukha Singh in Nand Rampur village on the night of July 10, the Sikhs of Kashipur took to the streets. The ensuing `chakka jam’ blocked traffic throughout the town for over 11 hours.

Then the lynchings began. The first was that of a man picked up from near a farm on July 8. On July 27, another man — dressed in a fakir’s garb according to the police, in a burkha according to the mob — was caught at a busy town square at 6pm and beaten to death. A nylon rope and an iron implement were recovered from him.

He was identified as Pannu Singh from the nearby Kundeshvri villge. His father, Kesar Singh, told ENS that his son `had gone soft in the head’ over the past three years and started to roam about in this garb. He said his son was totally innocent.

The Sikhs are convinced the man was a criminal and the aim of these attacks was to drive them away. Local industrialist Lakhwinder Singh Chhina says, “These attacks are politically motivated. There have been thefts before but such killings are rare. And why are only the Sikhs being targeted? The issue of Uttaranchal and these attacks are linked. But whosoever thinks we can be driven away in this fashion is mistaken.”

SP A.K. Senger does not agree. “These attacks are not communal. Some are for loot, others are killings by close relatives. It is only because these attacks have taken place at this historical juncture that the two issues are being connected.”

However, till the crimes are solved, and the guilty identified, the tension in Kashipur will not dissipate. As Achhar Singh states, “My son-in-law came here in 1970 after their village, Kakar, on the Amritsar border was shelled in the 1965 war only to meet a worse death here. But people must realise we have staked everything to live here. There is no going back, we will live and die here, come what may. No one can drive us away.”