Life sentences given to 47 Indian policemen for killing Sikh pilgrims

LUCKNOW, INDIA // A special court in India sentenced 47 policemen to life in prison for killing a group of Sikh pilgrims in 1991 whom they had claimed were militants.

The officers were convicted of shooting dead the pilgrims to try to earn promotions in Uttar Pradesh state, which at the time was being hit by Sikh militant activity.

The officers stopped a bus carrying pilgrims and their families before marching 11 of them into a jungle area of the northern state and carrying out the killings, said prosecutor S C Jaiswal. “The court observed that there was ample evidence to award life sentences to the guilty,” Mr Jaiswal said.

“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.”

The court of the Central Bureau of Investigation ( CBI), India’s leading investigative agency, found the police guilty of carrying out a “fake encounter”.

The term is a commonly used one in India for staged confrontations in which police or military forces execute unarmed suspects and later claim it as self-defence. The supreme court ordered the CBI to investigate the case. The CBI charged 57 officers in 1995 but 10 of them died during the eventual trial that took years to conclude in India’s slow legal system.