Emergency: ‘Lived in constant fear of midnight knocks by police’

Voices were stifled, the Press was gagged and youth were picked up as streets trembled under the weight of silence and surveillance, while families lived in constant fear of midnight knocks by the police.

That is how some eyewitnesses, young boys then, remember the imposition of Emergency on the midnight of June 25 — 50 years ago.

All of 13, and a student of Class IX, Lalit Batra from Sonepat recalled, “I come from a family committed to the RSS. After top leaders were picked up past midnight, the RSS started a satyagrah and gave a ‘jail bharo’ call. We were chosen by local leaders to go to jail. A 13-member jatha held a march, raising ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ slogans. There was one other student of Class IX, while the others were slightly older. The police intercepted us, put us in an 8×8 room with no power and washroom that evening and forgot about us. The next morning, we were moved to the Rohtak jail, where we were kept with bigwigs.”

The Jail Superintendent offered to release him, but Batra told him that he would go back to sloganeering. “They decided against releasing me. I appeared for the exam that year, handcuffed in one hand and writing my paper with the other, as two policemen stood guard,” he said, adding that they even distributed a cyclostyled local newspaper, ‘Darpan’, published from a hidden location, at various homes past midnight to deliver the news of the goings-on since the media had been gagged.

Took exam in jail, handcuffed

Narnaul resident Govind Bhardwaj — then in Uttar Pradesh — said he had just finished his postgraduation in economics and was an RSS pracharak. “Arrests were being made and the Local Intelligence Unit (LIU, equivalent of CID) was after us. An Inspector arrested 40 of us and took us to jail, where we rubbed shoulders with top political leaders. We got news from Bareilly that the DC and SP pulled out fingernails of our worker for raising ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ slogans. It was overwhelming. While in jail, I pursued my second MA — not for a degree, but to get sheets to write the stories of the Emergency, and document the sterilisation of young men and the torture of jailed leaders. A centre was set up for me, and two professors would come to the jail to conduct the exam,” he said, adding that he stayed in jail for 19 months under the Defence of India Rules.

The 19-month ordeal      

The late minister, Thakur Bir Singh’s son Lal Singh, who stayed in jail with his cousin Jitender Singh, recalled the night of June 25. “We were asleep when the police came knocking at our door in the wee hours and took away my father, a known adversary of Bansi Lal. He told my cousin and me to inform his friends. We left at 6 am and found the police making arrests at every home we went to. We were also picked up. I was to appear for my Class X exam, and could to do so only after being released from jail after 19 months. We managed to get bail in the DIR case against us, but before we could be released, MISA was slapped on us. We were arrested and taken to another jail before being shifted back to Hisar,” he stated.

His cousin, Jitender Singh, from Bhiwani, said he was “picked up” as he was Bir Singh’s nephew. “I was 23 years old, pursuing law and had no interest in politics. Though we were not tortured, we witnessed other prisoners who were tormented. Mice were released inside their pyjamas and the loose ends were tied at the ankles,” he recalled.

Sterilisation teams

Former minister OP Dhankar, a school student in 1975, said a government vehicle in the village had become synonymous with sterilisation teams. “In those days, as soon as a government vehicle entered the village, all the boys would scale walls and jump over gates for fear of being forcibly sterilised,” he recounted.

While they picked up the pieces of their life after the Emergency was lifted, and the bruises healed, they maintained that the scars remained.

Haryana Tribune