India gives life terms to 47 cops in 1991 killing of Sikhs
A special court in India has given life sentences to 47 policemen for killing a number of Sikh pilgrims 25 years ago.
On Monday, the court of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s foremost investigative police agency, convicted the cops of murdering 11 Sikh pilgrims in 1991.
The policemen, who claimed they killed the Sikhs because they thought they were militants, apparently sought a promotion in Uttar Pradesh, which was rocked by Sikh militant activity back then.
“The court observed that there was ample evidence to award life sentences to the guilty,” prosecutor SC Jaiswal said on Tuesday.
According to Jaiswal, at the time of the incident, the convicted policemen stopped a bus carrying the pilgrims and their families and took 10 men to a jungle area, where they shot them dead.
The CBI investigation found that the police requested autopsies to be performed on 10 corpses, which they got cremated on the same day. The body of an eleventh victim, also said to have been killed in the same incident, was never recovered.
“The court specifically observed that a crime of such magnitude could not have happened without the knowledge of those higher up and they too should have been charged,” Jaiswal said.
The court found the cops guilty of conducting a “fake encounter,” which is a term commonly used in India for encounters in which police or military forces kill unarmed suspects and later claim to have acted in self-defense.
Sikh militants were battling in the region to create a separate country named Khalistan at the time of the crime.
The CBI court, which was ordered by the Supreme Court to probe the case, charged 57 cops in 1995 but 10 of the officers later died.
The 47 remaining officers were found guilty on April 1, 2016 by special judge Lallu Singh.
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