Amod Kanth’s gallantry medal is badge of shame

And last month, Amir’s son Trilok Singh and his mother filed an affidavit before the Justice G.T. Nanavati Commission asking for Kanth to be stripped of his award. So that even at this late stage, they can salvage some justice and honour.

The story begins on November 5, 1984 when Amir Singh was killed by a mob of anti-Sikh rioters as he slipped out of his Paharganj house to call the police for help.

But the police claimed that Amir had been killed in a shootout between him and his family on one side and the police and the Army on the other. And the following year, Kanth, now the Joint Commissioner of Police, was awarded a gallantry medal. Another medal went to the then SHO of Paharganj police station, S S Mannan, for the same shootout in which a soldier, Kishan Bahadur, and a rioter, Mangal Dass, were killed.

However, the police version was turned on its head when the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) established that the bullets recovered from the bodies of Dass and Bahadur did not match any of the arms seized from the Sikh family.

This CFSL report, submitted in April 1985, corroborated the contention of Trilok Singh and his family that Bahadur and Dass were not shot by them but that they were killed in the crossfire between the police and the Army.

It still took four long years for the prosecution to withdraw their murder case against Trilok and his entire family, including women and minor children, on December 8, 1988 on the basis of the CFSL report.

While granting permission to withdraw the case, additional sessions judge S.P. Singh Chaudhary recorded the prosecution’s admission that the CFSL report had “ruled out (the possibility of) the injuries being caused to the deceased by bullets fired from the arms recovered from the accused persons.”

Kanth, when contacted by The Indian Express, said: “The failure of the case due to a technicality does not detract from the role for which I was given the gallantry award on the recommendation of the Army.”

He claimed that as the police had to deal with innumerable cases in the wake of the riots, the one related to the shootout might not have been properly investigated. For instance, the weapons actually used for killing, he said, might not have been recovered from the culprits.

When pointed out that wasn’t it odd that all the accused were members of one family, including minors, Kanth said: “I am telling you a truthful account from memory. There was anyway no scope for planting a story about something that happened so suddenly in the heart of the city. I was locked up in a position where I had to engage in firing and I myself rushed Bahadur to the hospital. The bullet that killed him was actually meant for me.”

Meanwhile, even when the prosecution withdrew the case, the administration couldn’t care less. According to Trilok’s affidavit, Amir was lynched by a mob on November 5 but the administration stuck to the police gallantry story.

In fact, the sub divisional magistrate of Paharganj, Srivatsa Krishna, noted as late as February 27, 1997: “The deceased Amir Singh was firing on armed forces from the roof of his house and was killed in the cross-firing by the armed forces. As such he was not an `84 riot victim.”

His widow, Gurcharan Kaur, then took the matter before Kiran Bedi, who was special secretary to the Lt Governor of Delhi, as she would be entitled to compensation only if Amir was categorised as a riot victim.

On March 11, 1997, Bedi directed that “necessary hearing with documents may be done to give fair judgment to the complainant.”

It was in such circumstances that seven months later, Amir Singh was finally acknowledged as a riot victim and his widow was paid the due compensation of Rs 3.20 lakh.

When contacted by The Indian Express in his modest tenement in Mahavir Nagar, Trilok said he wanted the gallantry award to Kanth and Mannan to be withdrawn because “that will purge our family of the stigma and humiliation of the criminal proceedings forced on us.”

As for the four weapons recovered from their possession, Trilok says his family was engaged in hunting in the days of his grandfather, Diwan Singh, who served in the British army. In any case, the recovery of the arms did not come in the way of the withdrawal of the prosecution because they were all licensed weapons.