A Fast For Justice
On fake encounters, impunity and the struggle against injustice in Manipur

Agrima Bhasin *

Irom Sharmila at IMphal Airport on 27 May 2014 :: Pix - Deepak Oinam

While the centre's declared intention—to decriminalise attempt to suicide and repeal Section 309—offers hope for Irom Sharmila's release, it risks being worthless without a decisive debate on AFSPA

It was during her internship in the late 1990s at Human Rights Alert (HRA), Manipur, that civil rights activist, Irom Sharmila Chanu grew deeply indignant at the periodic abuse of human rights after listening to testimonies of survivors of military violence. She learnt that joint military operations to weed out armed opposition groups, combing operations to catch 'suspects' or instil fear in civilian areas, humiliating frisking in public of boys and men, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, random detention, torture and sexual violence were commonplace in Manipur.

Sharmila publicly launched her indefinite fast against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958, on 5 November 2000, after the Assam Rifles shot 10 innocent civilians at Malom village. Since then she has been in detention on the false charge of 'attempt to commit suicide' under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises her political demand for democracy. In this context, while the centre's declared intention—to decriminalise attempt to suicide and repeal Section 309—offers hope for Irom Sharmila's release; it risks being worthless without a decisive debate on AFSPA and the crisis of impunity in Manipur.

The context of impunity

In a sharp cross-examination in March 2013, Mukul Sinha expertly punctured Havildar Premkumar Laishram's rather lame defence in a case involving an extrajudicial killing of a 19-year-old boy in Manipur. This was one of the six cases investigated by the Santosh Hegde Commission, instituted in 2013 by the Supreme Court of India in response to the persistent demands of human rights defenders to inquire into 1,528 cases of extrajudicial killings in Manipur since 1979.

"I put it to you that the entire story that you have stated before the Commission is wholly false and in reality you and team had picked up Orsonjit from a place near OK Hotel in the morning around 11:00 and his scooter was brought to the spot of the incident between Tharoijam and Taothong and Orsonjit was brought in your jeep to the place the scooter was thrown on the road side, Orsonjit was shot by you and your men from a very close range and killed," calmly intoned Mukul Sinha, neatly bringing to a close his cross-examination of Premkumar, who, with his team of Imphal West Police Commandos, fired 41 rounds (from AK-47s and other sophisticated weapons), of which 10 bullets killed Orsonjit on 16 March 2010.

Contrary to Havildar Premkumar's false story—that a gun-toting Orsonjit was killed in retaliatory firing after he and his team tried to stop him for the way he was riding his scooter—Lata Devi, mother of deceased and a teacher by profession, in her affidavit, noted that in fact 19-year-old Orsonjit, a lover of games and sports, had left home to get his Activa scooter repaired that morning. He was later arrested on false suspicion, tortured in custody and then dumped on the road alongside his scooter to give it a semblance of a genuine encounter.

On 4 March 2009, while he read aloud the day's newspaper for his unlettered mother, Md. Azad Khan, a student of class VII, too was picked up from his verandah in front of his family, dragged to the nearby field, brutally beaten and shot at by a combined force of Imphal West Police Commando and 21 Assam Rifles. A 9 mm pistol was implanted near his dead body. They suspected this 12-year-old to be a member of the People's United Liberation Front (PULF), which is not a banned organisation in Manipur. Instead, as Md. Wahid Ali, a cultivator by occupation and father of the deceased innocently recorded in his affidavit, Azad was "Roll No.11 at the Phoubhakchao High School."

Altogether, young Azad faced the arbitrary might of nearly 20 trained security personnel who fired 65 rounds from their AK-47s and INSAS rifles to execute the boy, extrajudicially. In its inquiry report, the Hegde Commission categorically confirmed that all six cases it probed, including the murders of Orsonjit and Azad Khan, were fake encounters, in which the security forces could not claim the right to self-defence. The Commission found it surprising that no efforts were made by trained security personnel to apprehend, overpower or immobilise the 'suspects' rather than killing them with "wholly disproportionate" force. The Commission's report furnishes ample circumstantial evidence to prosecute the culpable security personnel.

The arbitrary use of the "special powers" (to search and arrest without warrant, to shoot and of legal immunity against legal proceedings) under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958, has dangerously assaulted fundamental rights such as the right to life, the right to fair trial, the right against torture and arbitrary detention and the right to remedy as well as adversely impacted the economic, social and cultural rights of the people of Manipur. State forces (army, police and paramilitary) have regrettably become a political tool under AFSPA, to the extent that, condemnable, callous acts of human rights violations by them are routinely condoned, rather, rewarded with gallantry awards and promotions that become an incentive to kill. Security personnel responsible for the inhuman murder of Azad Khan, even Thangjam Manorama (in 2004), were unduly rewarded. The active complicity of the state then is an open secret.

The state is also complicit in its silence. The government of Manipurhas remained resolutely silent on extrajudicial executions and has failed to reprimand its homicidal police commandos while falsely detaining and torturing its human rights defenders. Also unquestionable is the compromised, if not defunct nature of the welfare institutions, lower judiciary and human rights bodies in the state. The Manipur Human Rights Commission (MHRC) is dysfunctional, since 2010. The state government's apathy over the years in assigning adequate investigating staff, filling vacancies and allocating irregular funds brought about the MHRC's gradual death. Even after two PILs (2005, 2011) in the Guwahati High Court, Imphal Bench, that sought urgent appointment of members and reactivation of the Commission, the office of the Commission often remains closed as serious grievances of litigants pile up.

At the two Universal Periodic Reviews (UPRs) it has undergone (April 2008 and May 2012) at the United Nations Human Rights Council, the government of India has justified AFSPA citing the 1997 Supreme Court ruling that it was not violative of fundamental rights. The governments claim to have taken on board a list of 'Dos and Don'ts' of the Supreme Court, to ensure that the act is not abused in practice. Yet the reality is that successive governments at the Centre have neither acted upon this list, nor the recommendations of the previous inquiry commissions (2004 C. Upendra Singh Commission of Inquiry that indicted the Assam Rifles for Manorama's murder; 2005 Jeevan Reddy Committee that recommended the repeal of AFSPA; and lately the findings of the Santosh Hegde Commission).

Inaction by the state legitimises a legal exclusion under AFSPA in a scenario where the people of Manipur already talk of complete political exclusion from the planning and development process. Such exclusion is sustained by the Indian State's rhetoric—that this is about a 'law and order' problem in a 'backward state' with imprudent, unemployed youths. This rhetoric, justifying the deployment of boots on the ground, is then contrasted with the regionalist aspirations of the armed groups and their resistance to 'reconciliation' and 'integration' with India. In this unresolved, armed ideological crossfire between the Indian state and the armed opposition groups, ordinary people suffer in want of stability.

Beating the drum for justice

In July 2014, members of Extra-judicial Executions Victim Families' Association, Manipur (EEVFAM), paid a floral tribute to late Sr. Advocate Mukul Sinha on his 63rd birth anniversary. It was in honour of the momentous role he played in masterly cross-examining the security forces responsible for extrajudicial killings in Manipur. EEVFAM members,young widows and mothers who lost their loved ones in these killings often brave the double stigma of being 'single' and of belonging to the family of an alleged 'terrorist'. To mitigate their suffering, Babloo Loitongbam, the gritty Director of HRA, Manipur, and his team, reached out and assisted the families with psychological counselling, legal aid and a solidarity platform (EEVFAM, in 2009) to facilitate their collective struggle for justice. With Loitongbam's committed support, EEVFAM also raised this issue at the UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, in May 2013.

The absence or lack of data on mass injustice is often an obstacle to seeking justice. The meticulous documentation on 1,528 extrajudicial executions in Manipur between 1979 and 2012 is the result of painstaking effort, over three decades, of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights in Manipur—organisations and individuals who joined hands in 2012 to educate the Special Rapporteur, Christof Heyns, on the situation of fake encounters, during his mission to India in (19-30th) March 2012. This critical chronological record—of the number of victims, their identity (including parent's name, age), date and year of execution, place and perpetrator's possible identity—paved the way for the even more significant writ petition in October 2012 jointly filed by EEVFAM and HRA, Manipur, with legal assistance from HRLN, New Delhi.

In this writ petition [(Crl.) No. 129], which is pending before the Supreme Court, the petitioners question "a framework of the forces and the police promoting extra-judicial executions and torture as a method of tackling terrorism" and demand the expedited investigation and adjudication of the 1,528 fake encounters. Other immediate prayers of the petitioners are—protection of witnesses who in the past have failed to depose before the commissions due to external pressure and fear of reprisal; FIRs through email and competent and well-paid legal aid lawyers provided by the state for all victims; no requirement of sanction for prosecution either under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) or AFSPA in case of custodial killings and human rights atrocities committed by state forces; and fair compensation for the family and dependents of the victims.

Thrice the government of Manipur, to avenge Babloo Loitongbam's 'audacity' for moving the Supreme Court in the fake encounters case, has transferred his wife, who is a state civil servant. In a climate where the measured silence of the political class is in fact a cause of continuing injustice, sustained and courageous advocacy by human rights groups begets objectionable surveillance of their activities, phones and emails. Like most human rights defenders in Manipur, EEVFAM petitioners too brave threat calls, against beating the drum for justice. Further distressing are harsh livelihood challenges, compounded by the stress of raising their children in a society that stigmatises them for trying to seek justice, for striving to prove the innocence of the ones they lost. The prejudice also pervades a corrupt polity and bureaucracy, which discriminates against them as 'conflict widows', thereby denying them their social security entitlements.

Loitongbam describes this prejudiced mindset in Manipur as a formidable challenge. Shockingly, they were stigmatised even inside the Supreme Court. In a hearing, it was insinuated that the petitioners themselves are related to the 'terrorists'. On another day, when the inquiry report of the Hegde Commission was presented in the Court, everyone (home ministry, defence ministry, government of Manipur) but the petitioners was given the copy of the report. Outraged, Sr. Advocate, Colin Gonsalves, the Counsel for the petitioners, expressed his displeasure and demanded a copy. Although human rights defenders in Manipur acknowledge the (inconsistent) intervention of the Supreme Court, the struggle for justice is being principally pursued outside the Court.

No room for cynicism

To commemorate 14 years of Irom Sharmila's historic fast, the Just Peace Foundation, a registered Trust founded by family and friends of Sharmila, organised a solidarity fast on 5 November 2014. To prepare for this event, the Human Rights Alert (HRA) team worked backwards. More than a fortnight before the fast, they began visiting schools and colleges in Imphal, educated the students clause-by-clause about AFSPA and elicited their informed participation. On the day of the fast, with other peaceful supporters, 200 students fasted from 8 a.m. till 3 p.m. to champion Sharmila's cause.

Be it S. Menjor, the talented local artist whose on-the-spot paintings conveyed his pained resistance to AFSPA or Akhu Chingangbam, a singer-songwriter and the founder of the five-member band, Imphal Talkies, known for his protest music or the Meira Paibis (literally, torch bearers, or elderly women activists, who protested naked in 2004 outside the army headquarters gate, Kangla, to heap humiliation on the Assam Rifles for the gruesome custodial torture, rape and murder of 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama)—all stood united at the solidarity fast, drawing on Sharmila's strength, yet giving her strength by keeping the struggle alive through their work.

In their petition, the petitioners acknowledge that the security forces are not trigger-happy individuals and were "never meant to be used and manipulated by politicians to train guns against civilians." The way forward they believe is the prosecution of guilty perpetrators, withdrawal of AFSPA from Manipur, radical police and administrative overhaul and earnest dialogue with armed groups. At a seminar this October organised by the Centre for Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, political and legal anthropologist, Dr. Dolly Kikon remarked with a deadpan look: "Do humans experience pain, torture and rape differently? No. So AFSPA is not just about Manipur or Kashmir but a global human rights issue."

In a war or conflict, those who talk about love and peace, Dr. Kikon added, "seem foolish". But cynicism is worse. The walk towards justice and against impunity involves, foremost, the audacity to hope, the will to question and the motivation to organise and strive so that not a single act of injustice is unaccounted for. And the human rights defenders in Manipur are walking, defiantly, towards justice for young Azad, Orsonjit, Manorama and others.

This article was originally published at "The Outlook" Magazine - Dec 27, 2014 ( here )