New Delhi:
A police gallantry award given to Chhattisgarh police officer Ankit Garg on the Republic Day for anti-Naxal operations has human rights activists up in arms. The reason: Mr Garg has been named as an accused of violent sexual torture by Soni Sori, the teacher accused of being a Maoist courier and currently in a Raipur jail.
"If she knew that the President of India has given her alleged tormentor a gallantry award she would perhaps stop raising the national flag and lose all her faith in government of India and in the rule of law," said Colin Gonsalves, Soni Sori's lawyer.
Ankit Garg has been awarded the medal specifically for an operation in October 2010 in Mahasamund district where six Maoists and two civilians were killed in an ambush by 250 members of the state's Special Task Force.
But some have dismissed Sori's allegations. "Maoists are experts when it comes to making up false stories. Torture is often used by them as a technique," said KPS Gill, former DGP, Punjab.
When questioned over the government's decision to award him a medal while the case is pending, Mr Garg was silent. "I don't want to comment in this context. I will state my position to the court," he said.
A hero to his colleagues, Mr Garg is accused of verbally abusing and directing police personnel to torture Soni Sori while she was in police custody.
In a letter to her lawyers from jail after she was arrested for being a courier for Maoist insurgents, Sori had alleged that she was stripped, tortured and given electric shocks in Mr Garg's presence, on his orders.
The fact that she was brutally sexually tortured is confirmed by independent medical examinations conducted under the Supreme Court's direction. The court had issued a notice to the state government, asking it to respond to the allegations made by Sori within 45 days. The deadline expired on January 23.
The reply is expected when the court takes up the case at the next hearing, the date for which has still not been set.
"There is absolutely no doubt that Soni Sori was tortured by the Chhattisgarh police, the award should be withdrawn. It may happen that a person has shown an act of courage and bravery, but that does not take away from the fact that at present this person is an accused in a case of custodial torture of a woman," said CPM Politburo member Brinda Karat.
The government's decision to award Mr Garg with a police gallantry medal has evoked several such angry reactions. But government sources say his recommendation had gone to the Centre much before the Soni Sori case unfolded and was meant for an entirely different operation.
While the jury is still out on Mr Garg's complicity, the case itself highlights one of the biggest dilemmas of a security force faced with a hostile rival, where the rules of war are blurred, where any tactic becomes fair game so much so that one person's villain becomes another man's hero and justice ends up having more than one meaning.