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Journalism of Courage
On Tuesday,the 41st day of Gurbaksh Singh Khalsas fast demanding the release of six former Sikh militants,his weight read 60 kg. Singh,48,says he was 76 kg before he began his fast. Sitting in a tent outside Amb Sahib Gurdwara,Singh has been surviving on a little helping of prasad each day after a visit to the gurdwara. A government doctor who checked him found all other parameters stable.
The six former militants he wants freed have completed 15 or more years in jails in Chandigarh,Karnataka and Gujarat out. Singh,himself charged with militant activities and arrested a number of times,had only a handful of people with him in the beginning. By now,he has garnered the support of several Sikh hardliners as well as politicians,both Akalis and Congressmen. After initial resistance,the state government too is now supporting his cause.
One of the prisoners,Lal Singh,was granted parole this week while the government has started the process of paroling three others lodged in a Chandigarh jails. Supporters see this as Gurbakshs success and the Akal Takht has asked him to end the fast since his demands have been met.
His supporters say he has spent more than three years in jail,including 16 months in Burail Jail in Chandigarh,where he came in contact with some of the convicts in the assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh.
He saw these convicts had been languishing there for 18 years. He was moved and after he got bail,he told me he needed to do something to secure the release of former militants who had completed their terms, says Harpal Singh Cheema,an advocate who spent time in Nabha Jail.
Last August,Gurbaksh Singh sent the Punjab governor an ultimatum to expedite the process of premature release of the six prisoners. On November 14,he started his fast.
Gurbakshs father,Jathedar Ajit Singh,now 87,is a farmer who had migrated from Sheikhupura district of Pakistans Punjab. Born on December 12,1965 in Thaska Ali village near Kurukshetra,Gurbaksh was drawn towards religious studies,say friends and supporters.
As a teenager,he started reciting poems before gatherings and giving religious sermons. At 17,he was arrested on suspicion of extremist activities,the first of many such occasions that would see him lodged in jails in Ambala,Panipat,Amritsar,Kurukshetra and Chandigarh
Though his supporters say he was not associated with any militant group,he has faced at least 10 cases at various places in Haryana and Chandigarh,many relating to militancy and others to violent protests and inflammatory speeches. His supporters say he has been exonerated in eight of them,and one of the remaining two is pending. In the 10th,he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by a Chandigarh court in 2010,and got bail after he appealed in the Supreme Court. The case involves a 1999 blast in Chandigarh that left two people injured.
