All those who know anything about Mr. Ribeiro, the Punjab police chief, will take him at his word. It is inconceivable that he will be party to fake encounters in which the police shoot individuals arrested elsewhere. He is not that kind of officer. At his press conference in Chandigarh last Saturday he also gave figures to substantiate his claim that fake encounters had not taken place on the border and elsewhere in the state. The Border Security Force deployed on the international border with Pakistan is not under his charge. But the BSF cannot pick up men without the cooperation of the state police which cooperation the Punjab police would not extend. Mr. Ribeiro’s own presence is, of course, a guarantee that the force would observe the necessary norms. But that would be so in this regard even if he was not there. The Punjab police are predominantly Sikh; if anything, they have been guilty of laxity in dealing with the terrorists; even those Punjab policemen who are opposed to the extremists and the terrorists will not take any risk lest the Akalis in office order inquiries and take action against them; indeed Mr. Ribeiro has found it virtually impossible to identify and isolate the pro-extremist elements in the Punjab police and raise the morale of the others, especially in the face of continuing interference by Akali ministers and their henchmen all over the state. All in all, the fake encounters theory is a deliberate lie which is fostered in order to agitate ordinary Sikhs as part of the propaganda war which the extremists and their allies are waging. This war is as dangerous as the one the terrorists are waging. In fact, it is more deadly in that it alienates the Sikhs in Punjab from the law enforcement agencies and creates an atmosphere of sympathy for the terrorists.
It has long been obvious that the police in Punjab are inadequate for the task of fighting the terrorists. They are also gravely handicapped. They do not get reliable and timely intelligence regarding the movement of terrorists from the people and they cannot put up for trial the terrorists they arrest because no one would come forward to give evidence against them. Indeed, it is a problem holding them in jail since the jail staff often treats them as VVIPs. Even so the authorities cannot afford to circumvent the law to dispose of these dangerous characters. For, it is important for them to defeat the insidious propaganda the extremists engage in. They must deny the extremists the evidence of wrong-doing which the latter are bound to exploit. At the same time the former must leave the latter in no doubt that they mean business. That is why it is so important for Mr. Rajiv Gandhi not to give in on the question of the release of the detainees in Jodhpur and the so-called rehabilitation of army deserters. He must not be seen to waver on these issues of great symbolic and practical significance.