Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa’s Struggle for Prisoner Rights Completes One Year

Part-2
LUDHIANA—After leaving the emergency ward, we gathered together in the parking lot to discuss about what to do next. While deliberating upon the list of political prisoners, Bhai Jang Singh suggested we shortlist the names of prisoners who have served mandatory terms of their sentences and deserves to get premature release. On being asked of consulting a specialized Advocate by me, Bhai Jang Singh strongly reacted to my statement by saying that the Advocates don’t endorse honest advice. He added that he has been facing exploitation by the renowned advocates from long time while looking after cases against his brother-in-law Bhai Lakhwinder Singh Lakha. Finally, we concluded to meet Advocate Gurjinder Singh Sahni to deliberate upon what to do next.
We headed directly towards chamber of Advocate Gurjinder Singh Sahni in the Ludhiana Court Complex. In his office, we urged Advocate Sahni to advise us what to do next. We informed him about the talk we had with the Police Commissioner about the issue of Political Sikh prisoners. Advocate Sahni also suggested we firstly shortlist the names of prisoners that we wanted the Government to grant release. Fixing the next day i.e. to thoroughly deliberate upon the issue, Advocate Sahni said that he will get the whole list of prisoners from his colleague Advocate Jaspal Singh Manjhpur by the following day. Advocate Manjhpur and Advocate Sahni share common chamber in the Court complex.So finally, we headed towards Bapu Ji’s native home in Hassanpur at around 6:30 pm. On the way to Hassanpur, we stopped for a while at the head office of vernacular Punjabi newspaper ‘Rozana Pehredar’ to meet Editor Jaspal Singh Heran. Heran had supported Bapu Ji’s struggle from the very first day and we were to inform him about the activities of whole day. I noticed an old aged man with white beard there who was talking to Aunty Ji like a father. After few minutes, I came to know he was Kamikkar Singh who was appointed by the Government to keep eye on the background activities of Bapu Ji’s struggle.
In the month of July, Kamikkar Singh had openly published posters against Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa to try and sledgehammer his struggle for the Sikh cause, soon after the appointment of IG Parmraj Umranangal as Police Commissioner in Ludhiana. Later, we learnt from internal sources that Kamikkar Singh was promised by the administration to solve cases of illegal possessions over land pieces running against him.
– The above write up on Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa’s hunger strike has been submitted by Bhai Pritpal Singh, a Sikh activist who has long supported Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa. Pritpal Singh spent a lot of time with Bapu Surat Singh when he initiated the struggle for the release of political prisoners.