Julio Ribeiro

Julio Ribeiro (born 5 May 1929) is a retired Indian Police Service officer. Ribeiro was director general of the Punjab Police from 1986, in the years of the Kharku struggle. Wikipedia says he joined the IPS in 1953, was Commissioner of Police in Bombay from 1982 to 1986 and was ambassador to Romania from 1989 to 1993. He is a living person, so what follows keeps to the sources and attributes each accusation to those who made it.

Key moments

• April 1986: the Hindustan Times of 11 April 1986 reported the policy of "bullet for bullet". Reduced to Ashes says he is known to have first stated it publicly. Ribeiro later said that Arun Nehru, then Union minister of state for internal security, had planted the story attributing the phrase to him. The Tribune's review of his memoir says Nehru put the phrase in his mouth after nine armed constables were killed without firing a shot when Sukha Sipahi was freed from custody, and that Ribeiro decided the police must return fire.
• 3 October 1986: six gunmen in police uniforms broke into the police headquarters at Jalandhar and tried to kill him. He was slightly wounded and one guard was killed; his wife and four policemen were also wounded (Los Angeles Times).
• During his term (the book gives no date): Reduced to Ashes says that Governor Siddhartha Shankar Ray and his police chief Ribeiro deliberated with a retired Punjab IGP, Gurdayal Singh, on their plans to create armed groups to take on the "militant menace" without involving the state apparatus directly, and that he advised against it. The book says Ray and Ribeiro apparently went ahead with undercover operations, using informers and infiltrators from the underworld, and that Ribeiro concedes this in his memoir. It quotes the memoir that men with criminal records were approached to move "in the guise of terrorists", were given police money and logistics, and then began to prey on rich citizens.
• 1987: Before the Barnala government was dismissed in October 1987, Akali ministers publicly accused Ribeiro of upholding an extra-judicial approach, and he accused them of offering support to the Sikh "militants".
• Later: Reduced to Ashes says Ribeiro's memoir tells how Gill replaced him as Punjab's police chief by persuading the government that a harder line was needed.
• December 1989: After his return from prison in December 1989, the five preconditions Simranjit Singh Mann set for the Central government before talks included criminal proceedings against Ray, Ribeiro and KPS Gill.

The Tribune's review also reports, from the memoir, that in 1984 he told his Bombay force to open fire if Sikhs or their property were attacked, and that when he raised the prosecution of those guilty of the November 1984 killings with Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister first ignored it and then rebuked him and defended Sajjan Kumar.

What he is remembered for: as the police chief tied to the phrase "bullet for bullet" and to the undercover groups, which he says he did not coin and did not control, and as the author of the memoir Bullet for Bullet (1998), which Reduced to Ashes quotes at length.