Bapu Surat Singh Stuck With Hefty Hospital Bill After Forceful Detention

Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa’s supporters will be marching outside the DMCH on July 16 against his forceful detention and torture

LUDHIANA, Punjab—The Dayanand Medical College & Hospital (DMCH) has asked Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa to pay Rs. 16 Lakh (approximately $25,000 USD) in hospital bills.  Bapu Surat Singh has been detained at the DMCH several times since June 2015.  He has been force fed by the hospital authorities on orders of the Punjab Government. 

Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa was last detained at the DMCH Intensive Care Unit on June 27 as he had fell unconscious.   Large police deployment surrounded his home and broke in forcefully.  The entry door, which was locked, was smashed and several belongings of the family members were taken.

While Bapu Ji is conscious now, he is still not being discharged despite repeated requests.  Ravinder Jeet Singh Gogi, told Sikh24 that a peaceful protest is being organized tomorrow, July 16, outside the DMCH against his father’s forceful detention.

Gogi had earlier told Sikh24 that “anytime the court date nears, they [the police] drop Bapu Ji off at his home in Hassanpur but later pick him up again after the court date.”  A petition is pending in the Punjab & Haryana High Court, which was filed in May 2016 by Bapu Surat Singh, asking the court to allow him to be discharged from the hospital.

Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa has also issued a press note stating that he is on a “fast till death” and he should not be given any medical treatment.  “If anything happens to me, the Punjab Government will be responsible for ignoring my plight for the political prisoners,” Bapu Surat Singh had told Sikh24 earlier in April 2016.

In January 2015, Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa went on an indefinite fast until death to seek release of political prisoners languishing in Indian jails despite having completed their sentences.  Till date, the Punjab Government has held several meetings with delegates appointed by Bapu Surat Singh, however, no action has been taken by its officials.

20 COMMENTS

  1. 1984 main genociders are Indian state National hero’s as they Subdued the Sikh Nationalism.

    For Sikhs they will be regarded as one among the many people who have committed atrocities on Sikhs in there journey of life.

    • ‘1984 main genociders are Indian state National hero’s as they Subdued the Sikh Nationalism.’ Well, there you have it from the horse’s mouth itself, RSS Harinder! Shabash! After all your pretence at being a Sikh or having brotherly kinship with Sikhs as fellow Indian citizens, you finally openly state who and what you stand for. In your belief those who murdered, raped and looted, committed genocide with full police, political and judicial approval and sanction are HEROES OF THE NATION?!!! Bhagat Singh and Udham Singh died for nothing if it has come to this. And your callous assertion that for Sikhs these genociders are just one of many who have committed such atrocities (and by inference therefore nothing to get particularly worked up about) let me tell you Sikhs remember in their daily prayers those who committed holocausts against us even hundreds of years ago. We will not forget the injustice of 1984 against Sikhs no matter how much you try it present it as a trifling matter of no account.

    • ‘1984 main genociders are Indian state National hero’s as they Subdued the Sikh Nationalism.’ Well, there you have it from the horse’s mouth itself, RSS Harinder! Shabash! After all your pretence at being a Sikh or having brotherly kinship with Sikhs as fellow Indian citizens, you finally openly state who and what you stand for. In your belief those who murdered, raped and looted, committed genocide with full police, political and judicial approval and sanction are HEROES OF THE NATION?!!! Bhagat Singh and Udham Singh died for nothing if it has come to this. And your callous assertion that for Sikhs these genociders are just one of many who have committed such atrocities (and by inference therefore nothing to get particularly worked up about) let me tell you Sikhs remember in their daily prayers those who committed holocausts against us even hundreds of years ago. We will not forget the injustice of 1984 against Sikhs no matter how much you try it present it as a trifling matter of no account

  2. Pvt hospitals are run on capitalistic models.
    They will charge you for their services.
    They are not concerned with the political part of any patients

    • You only pay for a service you actually want to use. Do I have the right to kidnap you from your house, drag you away against your will and your family’s wishes (pushing them away and denying them access to you), force you into a car then drive you (with all the anguish and confusion you will be suffering in addition to the actual physical pain of hunger striking) to a hospital where you manhandled onto a bed, restrained and again still totally against your will have strangers strip you and force feeding tubes down your mouth and stick injections into your skin? And then to charge you for that abuse? Oh wait a minute you said it is just capitalism so maybe you should also pay for my petrol in taking you form your house by force as as any hospital fees. Where in the constitution is there a law that permits you to do this? Bapu Surat Singh’s only crime is that he is a Sikh daring to stand up for human rights.

  3. He is trying to defend and get released the 1980-1990 Sikh Nationalist.

    Sikh Nation is not acceptable to majority of people which includes Sikhs themselves, Indian Nationalists and the Empire itself.

    It will lead to lot of violence and displacement which is not acceptable to majority of Sikhs.

    Never forget that Nations are created and destroyed by Empires.

    Bills will have to be payed as pvt hospitals are run on capitalistic model and not on ideology.

    • Bapu Surat Singh is drawing attention to the total injustice of keeping Sikhs in prison when they have served their sentences. What is the point going through the sham of court (albeit kangaroo) proceedings if you are then going to totally ignore the law yourself. Justifying the continued detention (when some have actually even become mentally ill through their treatment in prison) of Sikhs because of their desire to express their nationalism means that you accept that they are not actually criminals but rather political prisoners of conscience and that the law does not apply to them. In June of this year when the seven convicts in the 1991 assassination of (mass Sikh murderer) Rajiv Gandhi had served their 25 year jail sentence it wasn’t an elderly Tamil going on personal painful hunger strike who took up their case for remission and immediate release but the Tamil Nadu Government! Contrast that – the Government of Tamil Nadu using all the resources of its State and presumably doing so representing its electorate (as all politicians in India only lift a finger in response to votes) to get free convicted Hindu assassins when Bapu Surat Singh is raising the same issue on his own of men who are languishing under the evidential travesties of TADA and POTA where a Sikh could be convicted in camera and on the unchallenged and often fabricated evidence of police officers alone. Again ask former policeman Gurmeet Pinky of the fake encounters, killings and false arrests he alone was responsible for. Also best you do not try to talk of what the majority of Sikhs want as you are not even a Sikh yourself and as such have no knowledge of Sikh history (Sikhs had their own sovereign independent country), culture and religious doctrine. Trust me no Sikh feels sanguine about other Sikhs being locked up indefinitely for simply wanting to protect their identity when Hindus in Punjab were given the right secede in referendum of 1966 which led to the cleaving of Punjabi territory and the forsaking of Punjabi language as mother tongue by Hindus who wanted to express their democratic right to self determination. Tell me how many Punjabi Hindus were rounded up and put in jail and still languishing there now for wanting to express their sense of ‘nationalism’ and ‘difference’ from their Punjabi Sikh brothers?
      Nations are of course as you really know (and fear) created and destroyed by the acts of Individuals – that was why the Britishers were so scared of Mahatma Gandhi dying in his fasts unto death and why Bapu Surat Singh is being vilified by the likes of you and treated so inhumanely by repeated kidnapping from his home and forced to endure the indignities of force feeding to keep him alive at all costs. The irony of course is that you will make him a martyr by prolonging his suffering and waking up more Sikhs to the just cause he is raising. Bapu Surat Singh has NEVER been accused of let alone charged and convicted of ANY CRIME yet he is treated worse than a criminal. And your cruelty and callousness to suggest that he should pay for his (mal) treatment at the hospital when he does not desire it – wow! No doubt you think Sikh prisoners in Indian jails should also pay for their ‘board and lodging’ too. And what about those bullets the Punjab police used up in murdering Sikhs in broad daylight last year – those were paid for by the Indian taxpayer, surely the dead Sikhs should pay for those spent cartridges too? Oh, no wait they are dead. But you can go after their families to reclaim the money surely, after they are Sikhs too and that will prolong their suffering so added bonus there. The ‘majority’ of Sikhs won’t mind in your twisted, Alice in Wonderland view of Punjab replete with your notions of Sikhs of ‘simple nature’ (your words) who are too stupid to even figure out who has most to gain from repeated beadbi of their Guru. You are ready to abandon decency and any thought of natural justice or even jurisprudence because you see not a man, a human being but just a Sikh. That is the true Hinduvta mindset that allows justification of brutality and repression to those peoples and classes you regard to be beneath you. I wonder if you would suffer the indignities and sheer physical pain that Bapu Surat Singh endures for your moral convictions – I think not. If you will not release Sikh prisoners who have served the time because that is obviously the right thing to do then do it out of self interest if you must, present it as a magnanimous gesture from your Hinduvta compatriots, dress it up as reconciliation, after all the RSS have tried to misappropriate Banda Singh Bahadhur as a hero of ‘Indian nationalism’ recently. Just remember you might need a Bapu Surat Singh to fight for you if ever you are arrested and put into jail because if the law and justice can be so easily suspended and perverted for one Indian it can be done for any Indian.

      • He will have to fight it our legally .
        That again wont be easy to win as the Laws which India uses to adminster its citizens is derived from the British imperial laws .
        Under these imperial laws States are more powerful than inidividuals .

      • ‘He will have to fight legally’. An elderly man on the point of death, hunger striking for the human rights of others, undergoing the intense physical pain of starvation as well as the traumatic distress and indignities of being repeatedly abducted and force fed ‘has to fight legally’ even though he has not committed any crime? And even then you acknowledge the law is cynically constructed to prevent him doing so. And you are smugly proud of that? As for ‘oh, these are just British imperial laws’ (trying to pass all responsibility onto the Britishers who left India NEARLY 70 YEARS AGO!) – tell me did the Britishers who were using these laws back then force Mahatma Gandhi to give up his fasts unto death saying you have to fight it legally? No, they had enough decency to realise the inhumane suffering they were causing and could not have the death of a martyr on their consciences because that is a stain on the country’s honour.

      • ‘He will have to fight legally’. An elderly man on the point of death, hunger striking for the human rights of others, undergoing the intense physical pain of starvation as well as the traumatic distress and indignities of being repeatedly abducted and force fed ‘has to fight legally’ even though he has not committed any crime? And even then you acknowledge the law is cynically constructed to prevent him doing so. And you are smugly proud of that? As for ‘oh, these are just British imperial laws’ (trying to pass all responsibility onto the Britishers who left India NEARLY 70 YEARS AGO!) – tell me did the Britishers who were using these laws back then force Mahatma Gandhi to give up his fasts unto death saying you have to fight it legally? No, they had enough decency to realise the inhumane suffering they were causing and could not have the death of a martyr on their consciences because that is a stain on the country’s honour

    • All Bapu Surat Singh wants is justice. What is wrong with that Harinder? Why can’t other human beings have the same rights and freedoms as you?

      • The Laws which India uses to administer its citizens is that no individuals is allowed to fight the state .
        If he does then state may deny Justice because of fear that he will ight thestate again.
        Any change in the nation will be have to be done through act of parliment.
        State and its laws are supreme and all are to suppose to be follow it.

      • You obviously have no idea or indeed care for what natural justice is. In your estimation then Sikhs should not be celebrating bandi chhor divas which is all about the release from Gwalior Fort of not just Guru Hargobind but also of the 52 dissident prisoners he insisted be released with him. The only thing that reigns supreme is Waheguru. You are a manmukh with slave mentality so little point trying to explain natural justice or decency to you.

      • ‘State and its laws are supreme and all are to suppose to be follow it.’ So Sikhs should just accept the clean chits given by CBI to Kamal Nath and Jagdish Tytler and accept that no matter that TADA and POTA laws were unjust they are also okay too? The government is there to serve the people not the other way around.

      • In any society the accepted reality is what the Majority writes. The laws will be written keeping their well being in mind.

        How ever the minorities can always write what they think really happened and their part of story.

        1984 will always have two versions the National version and the Sikh version.

      • ‘In any society the accepted reality is what the Majority writes.’ Really? Then how do you explain the birth of Sikhi with Guru Nanak rejecting the repressive reality of the Mughal jihadism and Brahminism? Guru Gobind Singh did it again with his creation of the Khalsa in 1699. It does not matter if a majority of people are wrong, RSS Harinder, it only matters that you alone are prepared to stand up for right. And because of this Sikh ethos and the disproportionate sacrifices made by Sikhs inspired by it you have a free country to live in.
        As a Sikh the only reality I am interested is TRUTH not fiction. I suppose that is why you are so able to still believe in flying monkey kings going on rescue missions to fight multi-headed demons in the 21st Century, because that is your ‘accepted’ reality. 1984 will only have ONE VERSION – the truth recorded by the testimonies of its victims in human rights accounts and books that present the OVERWHELMING evidence of the state sponsored pogrom against the Sikhs. This supposedly ‘National version of the truth’ you cling to in order to justify murder and rape of Sikhs is a lie and everyone knows it. What do you think Manmohan Singh, in his role as a puppet Prime Minister apologised for? But then again as a staunch RSS supporter you also have a science fiction warped alternative history that RSS assassin Nathuram Godse that murdered Mahatma Gandhi (founding father of the country) was somehow a nationalist and patriot! Same altered perception of truth and reality that allows you to try and claim uber Sikh Banda Singh Bahadur as one of your own recently. No doubt you think Adolf Hitler – font for the history altering fascist – was just misunderstood and maligned too?

    • What bill should Bapu Surat Singh have to pay? Whoever illegally kidnapped him and admitted him is the one who should be paying.

  4. You could not make this Kafka-esque tamasha up. An old Sikh man who is on hunger strike for the rights of political prisoners – not just Sikhs by the way – who have completed their prison sentences is repeatedly kidnapped from his own home, force fed against his will and the wishes of his family (who are harassed by police) is now going to be presented with a hospital bill for the undignified treatment he refused?! The Britishers never tried to present Mahatma Gandhi with a bill for his hunger strike but the Indians will. Come on RSS Harinder, you never post on Bapu Surat Singh’s news and are always jingoistically trying to defend the indefensible, try and and present the case as to why an old man who has not been accused of committing a crime let alone ever convicted of one should be treated like this. Oh, yes, he is a Sikh. Shameful and disgusting.

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