Punjab

(For Guru Nanak Dev University Refresher Course in Human Rights lecture on 1 December 1998)

Evidence of extra-judicial killings in Punjab: Political background, bid for impunity and the work of the People’s Commission on Human Rights Violations in Punjab!

The Peoples’ Commission on Human Rights Violations in Punjab has been constituted by the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, which is a representative body of eighteen organizations and other individuals committed to enforcement of fundamental human rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. The People’s Commission held its first sitting at Chandigarh on 8^th, 9^th and 10^th of August 1998. I invite you to carefully study the Rules of Procedure and Evidence adopted by the Commission on the first day of its sitting, enclosed at the end of this note, which lay down the terms of reference, the conceptual parameters and the legal purview of its inquiries, as well as the obligations and the safeguards provided for persons who come under its proceedings as complainants, witnesses and accused. Perusal of this document, which binds the working of the Commission, should dispel many misconceptions, insinuations and apprehensions that are being orchestrated by motivated people. The Committee’s own objectives and the agenda are clearly spelt out in a position paper that was widely debated and adopted at its founding conference held in Chandigarh on 9 November 1997. The following are the main programs adopted by the Committee: (a) To develop a voluntary mechanism to collect and collate information on disappeared people from all over the State, and to ensure that the matter of police abductions leading to illegal cremations of dead bodies proceeds meaningfully and culminates in a just and satisfactory final order, (b) to evolve a workable system of state accountability, and to build up the pressure of public opinion to counter the bid for immunity, © to lobby for India to change the domestic laws in conformity with the UN instruments on torture, enforced disappearances, accountability, compensation to victims of abuse of power and other related matters, (d) to initiate a debate on vital issues of state power, its distribution, accountability and to work for a shared perspective on these matters with groups and movements all over India. It was also resolved that the Committee would not associate with any form of political activity outside its human rights mandate.

The first convention of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, held on 10 December 97, called on the Punjab government to constitute a Truth Commission to investigate all reports of human rights violations in the State. This the Akali Dal had pledged in its election manifesto. However, the government of Punjab reneged on its electoral pledge. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, and the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions guarantee the fundamental human rights, which the Indian Constitution has also pledged to its citizens. The State is under an obligation to fulfill these pledges. It is also the duty of the State to safeguard people’s life, liberty and property from the menace of terrorism. The State of India has miserably failed on both the fronts. Although there is the National Human Rights Commission and the State Human Rights Commission, they are bereft of the power to entertain complaints beyond the period of one year. No court - unless acting suo moto - would entertain the cases of human rights violations because of delay. On the international scene, Jews are investigating such violations which happened nearly fifty years ago. South Africa set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the same purpose. The Security Council’s resolutions have established International Tribunals to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But the people of Punjab are allowed no such remedy although human rights violations that occurred in the State have, by the force of public attention they command, become emblematic of the crises of Indian democratic polity at the turn of the millennium. It is, therefore, important that we discuss the meaning and the relevance of the People’s Commission with the knowledge of the background and the context of human rights abuses by the State agencies, which the People’s Commission aims to remedy. But in order to spare you the inanity of theoretical propositions, let me start with a factual narrative about the force of circumstances that got me personally involved with this initiative.

My involvement with the documentation of human rights violations in Punjab started with the formation of the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, which can trace its origins to Delhi’s anti-Sikh mayhem of November 1984. As all know, the bloody carnage, in the wake of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, had been orchestrated by politicians and silently condoned by the security forces. Most members of the Committee were involved in the rescue and relief efforts.

Over the preceding decades, many complex factors of the political drift in India had conspired to draw the Sikh groups in Punjab and the Indian establishment to the path of bloody confrontation. Since all of you are familiar with the recent history of the unrest in Punjab, I would spare you the details, but would like to make few general remarks pertinent to a better understanding of the subject under discussion. The separatist unrest and its highhanded repression are not unique to Punjab. Starting from the armed insurrection for an independent Nagaland in the northeast, which plagued Jawaharlal Nehru’s first two decades of premiership, India has known secessionist insurgency in its peripheral states from the beginning of its political independence. The Sikh unrest is unique only in one respect: It expresses a reversal of political sentiments in sections of a people who, together with Punjab’s Hindus, had federated with India in 1947 by violently forcing a truncation of Punjab. What accounted for the evaporation of the Sikh Peoples’ faith in the Indian State? What were the commitments and the ideals of the independence movement, which bound the Sikhs and the other peoples of the subcontinent to their common struggle against the British imperialism? Has the Indian State, and its leadership, betrayed the commitments and the ideals, as aforementioned? Did the leaders of the Indian government ever sincerely try to understand and accommodate the concrete grievances of the Sikh political groups, including their demand for a radical restructuring of the Center-State relations? What scope is there for reconciliation now, and in which framework? No position on the recent history of the unrest in Punjab can be legitimate if it does not develop from a historical inquiry into these questions.

Structural maladies of the Indian State: Some expert views:

In the preface to his monumental work on the Indian Constitution, H. M. Seervai points out that the decision to partition India in 1947 was a rejection of the scheme of federal unity founded on the principles of division of powers, constitutional safeguards for insecure minority communities, federalism and civil liberties. By this decision, the Indian leaders had abandoned the path of “peaceful construction, co-operation and ordered progress”. Once the basis of India’s unity was thus dissolved in the blood that flowed at the partition, a strong Center by itself could not eliminate the civil strife, disunity and confusion that are rooted in the heterogeneous nature of the Indian society.[1] This is a conclusion which political scientists like Morris-Jones had reached already in 1950s. His Parliament in India argues that Nehru had acquiesced in the “surgical operation” of partition with the hope that it would permanently remove the communal fault-line, which threatened to interfere with his plans for India’s reconstruction on socialist lines[2]. But Nehru’s philosophy of development has failed. We have already adopted the marketview of laissez-faire without even bothering to give the ideals of swadeshi a chance. The traumatic experiences of the last decades show that the system of centralised State we contrived at the departure of the British by abandoning the federal framework of India’s unity is fundamentally inappropriate to our heterogeneous social situation. It was a dismal culmination for India’s freedom struggle which the swadeshi movement against Bengal’s partition of 1905 had invested with much promise! The movement, for all its limitations, was glorious because it had crystallized the principles on which India, with all its diversity, was to evolve into a united, federal, independent nation. I shall reiterate the two main principles that had hauled India, against all vicissitudes, to the threshold of its freedom: [1] The provinces, organized as autonomous units on the basis of regional, linguistic and cultural unity, would federate under a center, which would administer limited subjects of common interests in the spirit of neutrality and fairness. This principle had found its vindication in the annulment of the partition of Bengal and the transfer of India’s capital to Delhi.[3] [2] The religious and other minorities would receive safeguards through agreement among responsible leaders of the various communities. This would allay their fears of being trampled by a brute majority, under a democratic play of numbers. The arrangement would give Indians the time to learn the art of living in political harmony, the precondition for a meaningful evolution of swaraj. Foreign powers would then be unable to exploit the differences for their own imperial ends. The second principle had found expression in the Lucknow Pact of 1916.[4] If India today, having already celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, seems to confront the overwhelming force of a reality that is like an enigma to the very notion of freedom, as reflected in its vast panorama of human rights abuses, the institutional matrix as well as the ideologies that rationalize them, it may be because freed from the chains of foreign slavery, we have become tied to the cart of State-institutions that takes us round and round the circumference of our own historical misfortunes. Perhaps the situation proves that the objective realities that explain our colonial era, and which survived the transfer of power in 1947, are stronger than the sentiments that guided our freedom struggle. The question, suggestive as it is of the historical bewilderment in which the people’s initiative must surrogate the constitutional functions of the State, must partially influence the discussion of the subject in the hand.

The issue of violence:

Before developing on the contentions of our documentation on State atrocities and the work of the People’s Commission, I take the liberty of stating my position on another important issue: the methods of violence followed by the Sikh underground groups. There is no scope for ambiguity on this issue in the circles working for fundamental human rights in this country. There is no point in protesting against the violence wrought by the State if we are merely going to augment the quantity of these excesses with our own actions. Indiscriminate violence stems from a world-view that blurs the individual identities of the oppressors and the oppressed, within blanket descriptions and stereotypes. This mentality undermines the very foundation of justice, namely the notion of concrete moral agent. While combating de facto oppression, it propagates the greater abomination of de jure inhumanity. The Sikh militant movement in Punjab became infected by some obnoxious traits because its leaders were unable to strictly enforce and themselves practice the prohibition against the taking of innocent lives, an absolute moral imperative for all revolutionary movements. The State atrocities, in terms of the historical consciousness that dictates our era, is the obverse main saide of the coin.

The policy of elimination: the first official enunciation!

Let us now steer clear of the generalities to the basic facts of the situation in which we are discussing the People’s Commission. In October 1987, the elected government of Punjab was dismissed allegedly for its failure to safeguard Hindus from the Sikh militant attacks, and the State was brought under the President’s Rule. The dismissal of the government was preceded by ink slinging between Finance Minister Balwant Singh and Mr Rebeiro, the Director General of Police of Punjab, an iron-fist appointee of the Prime Minister. Balwant Singh criticized the police chief for being cavalier with the press in making statements derogatory to the elected government and for upholding an extrajudicial approach to tackle the separatist militancy. Rebeiro charged the ministers and legislators of the Akali Dal of harbouring and extending support to separatist militants.[5]

Early investigations and the first reports on State atrocities

From early 1988, when reports of police atrocities amidst the escalation of the Sikh separatist violence became regular part of the news from Punjab, I began to travel in the State to investigate. During these travels, I came in close contact with many who had suffered illegal detention, interrogation under torture and other atrocities. I also met relatives of those who had been eliminated in the police custody. In two cases, I found that detainees had been done to death after prolonged interrogation under severe torture. One case from the Muktsar subdivision of Faridkot district involved Bhupinder Singh Sarang, a fifteen years old lad, a student of class X, and a local football star. He had been picked up from the house, taken to Sadar police station in Muktsar and was tortured under interrogation. I met eye-witnesses to his torture, and also a local youth leader who had seen Bhupinder Singh in the custody. But Bhupinder Singh was shown to have been killed in an armed-encounter. I also documented the case of a sixteen years old Gurbaksh Singh from Guru Harsahay sub-division of Ferozepur who had been produced before the police by a large group of prominent local citizens. The police then picked up Gurbaksh Singh’s sister Balbir Kaur and her husband Mahal Singh. Gurbaksh Singh was later shown to have been killed in an armed encounter, along with another young Sikh, Balwant Singh. Mahal Singh was arrested under TADA. Balbir Kaur was released after eight days of illegal detention in the course of which she suffered severe torture and sexual abuse. She took to bed, and died three months later. I documented dozens of such cases which exposed a clear pattern of illegal abduction, custodial torture under interrogation culminating in executions, explained away as deaths in armed-encounters.

These cases in which there were witnesses to illegal arrests and custodial torture before the police announced their deaths in encounters were rare in comparison to others in which persons were whisked away by unidentified men, appearing out of the blue, in vehicles without number plates, to be taken to undisclosed places for interrogation, and to disappear for ever. I documented dozens of such cases. Rarely in some instances, the disappeared returned from the “dragon’s belly”. Some of them survived when the High Court of Punjab and Haryana or the Supreme Court of India issued directions for their production. I became directly involved in one such case, of Iqbal Singh from Muktsar. Iqbal Singh had already been arrested once before, following the crackdown on the Sikh religious shrines by the army in June 1984, from Gurudwara Dukhniwaran in Patiala. Arrested on charges of waging war against the government, Iqbal Singh was tortured under interrogation at Ladha Kothi, previously a pleasure palace of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, converted into a police interrogation center. In August 1985, a court in Patiala acquitted him of all charges, and he was released from prison. Iqbal Singh was again picked up from the road outside his house in Muktsar by unidentified policemen in plain clothes in cars without number plates and with tinted glasses. Iqbal Singh’s mother learnt from a minor police official about his illegal custody and torture at an interrogation center in Faridkot. The same official later helped Iqbal Singh to smuggle out a letter in which he gave the location of his custody, and also expressed the fear that he might be killed. On the strength of this letter, the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab moved the Supreme Court in May 1988 for a writ of habeas corpus. The court ordered the government of Punjab to ensure production of the detainee before the nearest magistrate and to arrange for his interview with his family and his lawyers. The court also allowed the Committee to serve its orders on the respondents personally. With this order, I and two lawyers from Delhi reached Faridkot’s Senior Superintendent of Police on 12 May 1988. A teleprinter message about the court’s order from the office of the Home Secretary had already reached him. He asked who Iqbal Singh was. Almost instantaneously, he announced that his police had never taken Iqbal Singh into custody. But he promised to search all the jails, lock-ups and police stations under his jurisdiction and to give us the results by next morning. The next morning we were informed that the detainee was not to be found in any of the police stations in the district. Later in the day, we went to Muktsar to inform Iqbal Singh’s mother on the dismal outcome of our efforts. On reaching her house we discovered to our surprise that Iqbal Singh had been released by Faridkot’s SSP the previous afternoon, few hours before we heard his denials on Iqbal Singh ever having been taken into custody. Iqbal Singh had been severely tortured in the course of his detention. We saw marks of injury on his body, and conducted a long interview with him in the course of which he revealed concrete information on several custodial executions to which he had become a witness.

I also got involved with the case of Avtar Singh Sidhu, a leader of the Youth Akali Dal from Muktsar, which brought us in first direct confrontation with K. P. S. Gill, then Director General of Punjab Police. Sidhu had been helpful in gathering information on several cases of faked encounters in his region. On 30 September 1988, the police raided his house and a shop of pesticides owned by him in Muktsar. Sidhu was not present at either place. Many of his relatives including his younger brother were taken into custody to force him to surrender. On 14 October 1988, Sidhu surrendered himself to the custody of K. P. S. Gill at the latter’s residence in Chandigarh, in the presence of Amrinder Singh, scion of the Patiala royalty. When three weeks later Sidhu had still not been produced before a magistrate, I and two other members of the Committee went to Faridkot and requested the Senior Superintendent of Police to grant an interview with the detainee. The SSP admitted to Sidhu’s detention, but expressed inability to grant our request since the DGP himself was handling the case. We then approached the DGP at Chandigarh. Gill took our application and promising to respond to the request for interview in due course, chided us for “disturbing him at odd hours on unimportant issues”. We also gave the particulars of the case to the Secretary of the Punjab’s Governor who assured us that he would place them before the Governor. Sidhu was released on 30 November 1988, and he gave us a long interview on his ordeals.

I also came across several examples of purely bestial abuse of police powers, against the absolutely innocent and the meek. In one case, the police officer in-charge of a post at village Bham in Batala subdivision of Gurdaspur district, kidnapped two teenage girls Salvinder Kaur and Sarabjit Kaur in front of eye-witnesses in his official jeep. The officer in-charge of police station in Hargovindpur denied their custody. Four days later, their naked distended bodies were recovered from a nearby canal. Officers of Hargovindpur police station tried to pressurise the parents to sign a declaration that the bodies were unidentified and unclaimed, and were threatened that they would be eliminated in an “encounter” if they disobeyed. But the Sub-divisional Magistrate of Batala interfered and had the bodies handed over to the parents for cremation. One month later, the Senior Superintendent of Police of the district told a newspaper that the policeman alleged to have kidnapped the girls was actually having an affair with one of them. The policeman was later arrested on charges of kidnapping, rape and murder to be soon released on bail as the prosecution did not file a charge-sheet against him within the stipulated period of three months.

I also came across examples of the police terrorising the whole villages in the border districts known to be militants’ strongholds. Unable to distinguish silent sympathisers from active militants, the security forces were using collective humiliation and intimidation to wean them away from their political sympathies. In reality, these methods were only adding to their alienation the thrust of hatred.

The testimonies of victims of police powers, which I recorded, not only established systematic violation of the domestic and international guarantees on inalienable human rights, they also repudiated the grand narrative of Indian officials and their sympathisers who portrayed the situation in Punjab as a war between the patriotic forces and anti-national mercenaries. The evidence collected by me discredited their claims that the government agencies represented the forces of social order, justice and legitimacy. I failed to recognise anything noble in the evidence of police operations. Although some of the cases documented by me might have involved people with extremist connections, I gained the impression that the majority of them had suffered primarily as victims of arbitrariness, police powers gone haywire, absence of safeguards and wilful infraction of fundamental human rights.

These investigations constituted the basis of the detailed case studies of human rights violations, which the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab published and circulated in the hope that testimonies of victims may persuade many to see that the “war without quarter” would destroy the very basis of the nation in whose name it was being waged.[6] The bulk of these early reports also form part of my book, published in 1991 under the title, “The Sikh Struggle: Origin, evolution and present phase”. Apart from publishing these reports, the Committee has also been taking up cases of individual detainees, by filing petitions for the writ of habeas corpus before the Supreme Court, and in other ways.

Political consensus on State terrorism and the mandate of 1992:

Over the next three years, government of India changed party-hands four times. However, these changes made no difference either to the government’s political approach in regard to the problem of unrest in Punjab or to the basic patterns of police functioning in the State. From the very beginning of the problem in Punjab, political elements within the government are known to have hobnobbed with one militant faction or the other with the view to isolate an immediate adversary in the ascendance. Never was there any attempt to initiate discussions with the extremist groups on the basis of concrete issues which constitute the hard-core of Sikh discontent. All overtures and contacts were always essentially mercenary in nature, based on calculations of short-term paltry political advantages and negativating the prospects of a transparent deliberations on the merits of the issues involved. In March 1988, the Indian parliament passed the 59^th Amendment of the Constitution which enabled the central government to extend the President’s rule in the State beyond one year; to impose emergency on the ground of “internal disturbance” and to suspend Article 21 of the Constitution which guaranteed that no person shall be deprived of life and liberty except according to the procedure established by law.[7] The Union government decided to bring about this amendment of the constitution to selectively take away the right to life for the people of Punjab, in spite of the fact that there were already in force special legislations, which not only conflicted with the elemental principles of due process, but also eliminated the existing legal safeguards of free and fair trial. Apart from the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987, and the Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act, 1984, which we would discuss at length in the afternoon session, there were also other black laws like the National Security Act, 1980, as amended by the Act 24 of 1984 specifically with the reference to “the extremist and terrorist elements in the disturbed areas of Punjab and Chandigarh”. The Act provided for detention without charge or trial for one year in all parts of India, and two years in Punjab. Also in force was the Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act, which empowered the security forces to enter and search any premises, and to arrest any person without warrant. It also allowed the security forces to destroy any place on the suspicion of being a “terrorist hideout” and to shoot to kill a suspected terrorist with immunity from prosecution. In November 1991, Punjab came under the Disturbed Areas Act, which gave the security forces extensive powers to search, detain and interrogate anyone without judicial warrants. Along with these steps, the central government announced that the elections to parliament and the State Assembly for Punjab would be held in the first quarter of 1992. A meeting of all the major Akali Sikh groups held on 4 January 1992, decided to boycott the elections. The government reported 28 per cent of polling. The turnout in the urban areas was between 25 and 40 per cent. In the rural constituencies it was between 5 and 20 per cent. The results declared on 20 February, returned the Congress with a two thirds majority in the State Assembly. Beant Singh, who had been dismissed from the Ministry of Darbara Singh in 1983 on the charge of having instigated a faked encounter, formed a Congress ministry as the new Chief Minister of Punjab.[8]

Silencing the Punjab human rights groups

The state government projected its success at the hustings, a corollary of the poll-boycott by the main Akali groups, as the democratic mandate which it had received to stamp out the Sikh separatist militancy by whatever means. Several human rights groups in Punjab, although disorganised and faction-ridden, had been embarrassing the government by publicising police excesses. The government under Chief Minister Beant Singh decided to first silence these groups before confronting the larger problems of militancy in Punjab’s countryside.

Ram Singh Biling, a reporter with the Punjabi daily newspaper Ajit and the Secretary of Punjab Human Rights Organisation for his home district of Sangrur, was picked up and unceremoniously executed soon after the Congress government took office. Next was the turn of Ajit Singh Bains, retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and Chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organization. His illegal arrest in April 1992 was not acknowledged for two days. Bains was manhandled, abused and publicly exhibited in handcuffs. Later, his arrest was formalised under TADA. The accusation was that Bains had taken part in a secret meeting of militant leaders, held at Anandpur on March 18, where they hatched a conspiracy to carry out terrorist actions. An inquiry later ordered by the High Court of Punjab established that Ajit Singh Bains’ name did not figure in the original First Information Report about the “illegal meeting”. However, the idea of arresting Bains was not to secure his conviction under the law, but to paralyse PHRO, and to demoralise other human rights groups with the example. Chief Minister Beant Singh told the State Legislative Assembly on April 6 that his government would not release Bains because his organisation was engaged in defending terrorists.[9]

A human rights lawyer Jagwinder Singh was picked up from his house in Kapurthala by a group of uniformed policemen on 25 September 1992 evening. Although the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary promised to intervene, Jagwinder Singh never returned.

On 18 May 1992, Amritsar police picked up Param Satinderjit Singh, a student of Guru Nanak Dev University, from the university campus. He was forced to identify suspected sympathisers of the separatist cause within the university, who were also picked up. The police brought Param Satinderjit Singh to the university campus several times for this purpose. The university students held a demonstration to protest against the abduction, and his father went on a hunger strike. But Param Satinderjit Singh was not released. There was no trace of him thereafter.

Punjab government kept up the pressure on the PHRO by arresting Malwinder Singh Malli, General Secretary of the organisation, in August 1992. Malli was also the editor of “Paigam”, a vernacular journal affiliated with a Marxist-Leninist group, whose work in the field had led to several exhaustive reports on police atrocities. Elimination of Ram Singh Biling and Jagwinder Singh, and arrests of Ajit Singh Bains and Malwinder Singh Malli effectively paralysed the regional human rights groups. Several prominent members of the PHRO either took temporary asylum in foreign countries, or went into hibernation. Those who remained active were suppressed or silenced. Now the security forces could give undivided attention to eliminate the ring-leaders of the separatist militancy.

The war without a quarter

The Sikhs of Punjab had never clearly understood the rationale of the militants’ objectives. These groups in their hay-days had generally relied on vacuous sympathies to find hideouts and other forms of support to keep up their operations. With the rural Sikhs totally dismayed at the state of affairs, militants were now helpless against the security forces who began to hunt them down like the game of prey. Thus, within six months of assuming office the government of Beant Singh was able to break the backbone of the Sikh militant movement. Main leaders of guerrilla outfits were either killed, or compelled to flee the scene. Hundreds of them also surrendered. Thousands of others suffered torture in custody, long periods of illegal imprisonment and myriad other forms of physical and psychological torment. I have exhaustively documented the historical context of the Sikh separatist violence, its political and psychological aspects and its irrationality in my second book on Punjab, published by Ajanta Books International in 1997 under the title: “The Sikh Unrest and the Indian State: Politics, Personalities and Historical retrospective.”

Evidence of Mass-Cremations

Following the decimation of the guerrilla groups under Beant Singh’s government in Punjab, the cleansing the countryside of militant sympathisers apparently became the next main task of the security forces in the State. According to the police figures, published in 1993, security forces in Punjab killed 2,119 militants in the year 1992 under the euphemism of “encounters”. A larger number of people in the border districts, picked up by the police for interrogation, simply “disappeared”. Evidence that later surfaced shows that the “disappeared” were killed and their bodies quietly disposed of. First appeared reports that Punjab’s irrigation canals had become the dumping ground for bodies of killed militants and their sympathisers. Reports carried by the Pioneer on 26 and 27 March 1992 said that the government of Rajasthan had formally complained to Punjab’s Chief Secretary that these canals were carrying large number of dead bodies into the State. The newspaper reports also said that many dead bodies, with hands and feet tied together, were being fished out when water in-flow in canals was stopped for repair works.

Jaswant Singh Khalra from Amritsar produced more incriminating evidence in the form of official records from the cremation grounds of Amritsar, Patti and Tarn Taran for the year 1992. These records showed that the police had burnt more than 1400 bodies in these three cremation grounds alone by stating that they were unclaimed or unidentified. Jaswant Singh Khalra claimed, later corroborated by my own investigations, that the cremated were those who had earlier been picked up for interrogation.

I travelled extensively in the region of Amritsar to investigate these revelations. Examination of cremation records from the office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths, Amritsar showed that three hundred bodies were cremated as unidentified/ unclaimed in 1992 alone at the Durgiana mandir cremation grounds even though in the case of one hundred and twelve the names had actually been recorded. Forty-one were shown as having died of bullet injuries. A firewood purchase register maintained at the Patti municipal cremation grounds showed that five hundred and thirty-eight bodies were cremated as unidentified/ unclaimed between 1991 and 1994. After examining these records, I talked to attendants of the cremation grounds, the doctors who had conducted post-mortems and also the relatives of victims who furnished the necessary evidence to establish linkages between the disappearances and illegal cremations. Two attendants of the cremation ground at Patti told me that the police would often buy firewood for the cremation of one or two persons but would cremate several bodies together on a single pyre. The Chief Medical Officer of the Civil Hospital at Patti confessed that a post-mortem was completed in less than five minutes: The whole procedure had been simplified to the extent that it meant no more than filling a paper that announced the cause of death and the time of death, with the policemen providing the information. He also gave me gruesome details of Sarabjit Singh’s post-mortem. On 30 October 1993, supposedly the dead body of Sarabjit Singh was brought to Patti hospital by the officers of Valtoha police station in Amritsar district for post-mortem. The doctor who was to carry out the autopsy discovered that the man who had a bullet injury on his head was still breathing. Thereupon, Valtoha police officers insisted on taking him away. After some time, they brought him back really dead and forced a different doctor to fill-in an autopsy report. Although a nurse in the hospital was able to identify Sarabjit Singh, and also knew where his parents lived, the police officers took away the body for a hasty cremation.

I was also able to interview many serving police officers who, on the condition of anonymity, provided detailed narratives which explained abductions, custodial torture, summary executions and illegal cremations as aspects of a strategy to weed out from the roots the Sikh separatist militancy.

Khalra’s disappearance and the Supreme Court’s Order for an inquiry

At this time, Jaswant Singh Khalra was the General Secretary of the Akali Dal’s Human Rights Wing. In 1995, this organisation filed a Writ Petition No. 990 in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to pray for an independent inquiry into the revelations on mass cremations. However, the High Court dismissed the petition with the remarks that it was “too vague” and that the petitioner had no standing in the matter. Following the dismissal of the petition by the High Court, the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab moved the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution to demand a CBI inquiry into the matter. After detailing the facts, the petition asked for an inquiry by an independent agency. Persons had been cremated as unidentified, against the prescribed procedure in such cases, not because their identities were not known or knowable, or because there were none to claim them, but by virtue of a systematic policy of extra-judicial executions and secret disposal of dead bodies.

While the petition before the Supreme Court was still at the preliminary stage of hearing, uniformed commandos of the Punjab police abducted Jaswant Singh Khalra from outside his house on 6 September 1995. Without Khalra’s resourcefulness and extensive contacts in the district of Amritsar, it would not have been possible to so conclusively expose the methods the government had followed to crush the separatist movement. Khalra had also been in the forefront of human rights campaign to punish the guilty who now wanted him out of the way. According to the affidavits sworn by Khalra’s colleagues and acquaintances including Sikh Gurudwara Prabhandhak Committee’s chief Gurcharan Singh Tohra, former judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Ajit Singh Bains, he had been receiving threats from Ajit Singh Sandhu, the Senior Superintendent of Police, Tarn Taran to stop investigating into the matter of illegal cremations. Khalra’s wife petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. A bench of the court presided by Justice Kuldip Singh ordered the CBI to investigate not only the matter of Khalra’s disappearance, but also the larger issue of “illegal cremations”, for which he had apparently sacrificed his life.

Report by the CBI, and the reference to the National Human Rights Commission

The CBI held police officials under Ajit Singh Sandhu, former Senior Superintendent of Tarn Taran police district, responsible for Khalra’s abduction. The investigation into the allegations of secret cremations was completed in December 1996. Although the court decided to keep the report secret, it released the figures on illegal cremations at three cremation grounds in the Amritsar district: Out of the total number of bodies the Punjab police cremated at these sites, the CBI had completed the identification of 585 bodies, only partially identifying 274, but failing in the identification of over 1,238. In its order dated 11 December 1996, the Supreme Court observed: “Needless to say that the report discloses flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale.” The Court went on to pass the order requesting the National Human Rights Commission to examine and to give its findings on all the issues which arise from the CBI’s report and are raised by the parties. The court further clarified that as the Commission was going to examine the matter at the request of the Court, any compensation awarded by the Commission shall be binding and payable.

Contentions on the Powers of the Commission

At the first hearing of the matter on 29 January 1997, the Commission asked all the parties in the case including the standing counsels for the Central government, the State of Punjab and the advocates for the Punjab police officers to clarify their assumptions on the capacity in which the Commission functioned: Was the Commission bound by the scheme under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, which created the Commission, with the difference that the limitation under Section 36(2) of the Act would not apply? Section 36(2) prohibits the Commission from inquiring into incidents of violation that are more than one year old. Or, had the Supreme Court designated the Commission as a body sui-generis to complete the tasks and to adjudicate on the issues that had been referred to it?

The State of Punjab and its agencies argued that the powers of the Supreme Court are not transferable, that the Commission can adjudicate only if allowed under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, that the mandate of the Supreme Court does not nullify the Section 36(2) of the Act, and finally that the Supreme Court had only referred to the Commission the issue of compensation.

The standing counsel for the Union government argued that the Commission was only a fact finding body that could not adjudicate. The Commission was bound by the limitation under Section 36(2) of the Act and, in addition, could not entertain complaints that are sub-judice.

The Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab took the following position. The Supreme Court, acting under Article 32 of the Constitution, has asked the Commission to examine all the issues arising from the CBI report and to determine them under the law. Article 32 lays down a constitutional obligation on the Supreme Court, and confers all the incidental and the ancillary powers including the power to forge new remedies, to protect the fundamental rights of the people. Thus the capacity in which the Commission acts in this case is that of a sui generis designate of the Supreme Court. Therefore the bar under Section 36(2) of the Act would not apply.

The Committee also argued that the Commission’s inquiry had to cover not only the illegal cremations at the three sites in the district of Amritsar, revealed in the CBI’s report, but also those which occurred at hundreds of cremation sites in the seventeen districts of Punjab, where the same pattern of executions and hasty burning of the dead bodies had been followed by the security agencies. These are not fantastic claims, but definite allegations based on documentary evidence that has been compiled by us.

The NHRC’s Order and the position of the Union Government

On 4 August 1997, the National Human Rights Commission gave a detailed order on these preliminary contentions holding that it was designated as a body sui-generis to carry out the mandate of the Supreme Court. Therefore, Section 36(2), or any other limiting provision of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 could not restrain its powers to carry out the Supreme Court’s mandate. The Commission then went on to invite from all the parties suggestions on modalities for further proceedings, and also to devise a pro-forma to invite complaints by public-notice.

1. When the Commission met for further hearing on 4 September 1997, the standing counsel for the central government moved an application praying that the proceedings of the Commission be stayed for three months as the Central government and the Ministry of Home Affairs, not being in agreement with the Commission’s order of 4 August 1997, wish to move the Supreme Court for a clarification. The Commission adjourned the matter till 6 October 1997 to given them time to move the Supreme Court. The objection to the order of the NHRC, since filed by the Central government, has been decided by the Supreme Court’s order from 10 September 1998. The order very clearly says that the CBI report disclosed flagrant violation of human rights in the State of Punjab and that the subject of the inquiry by the National Human Rights Commission was such violations. However, the Commission is yet to issue its orders on the scope of the inquiry. The data obtained from the few cremation grounds which the CBI investigated is reflective of the pattern of extrajudicial executions that obtained all over the State. Clear links between involuntar disappearances in the State and the disposal of dead bodies by the police on a mass scale have been established. Union and the Punjab governments are still trying hard to limit the scope of the inquiry in the reference before the National Human Rights. Given the facts that have already been established, the inquiry and adjudication by the Commission cannot be limited either to a region of Punjab or to any numbers that figure in the CBI’s report on illegal cremations. The CBI’s report establishes patterns of violations that are common to the whole of Punjab. Illegal cremation is not the real issue but the violations that culminated in the cremations. The writ petitions, the Supreme Court’s order asking the CBI to investigate, the order by which the Court referred the matter to the NHRC, the Commission’s own order on the preliminary issues and finally the Supreme Court’s order on the Union of India’s application for clarification all consistently make it clear that the issues to be determined are: Whether the State agencies illegally abducted people, killed them in custody and then illegally disposed of dead bodies. Our position is that the Commission has to initiate inquiries if a complaint can prima facie establish involuntary disappearance. There can be no compromise on this issue.

It is absolutely outrageous that the government of India continues to stonewall the Supreme Court’s order of a thorough probe even after the facts regarding illegal police abductions leading to extrajudicial executions and secret disposal of dead bodies have been so unambiguously established. The situation not only contradicts India’s claims of adherence to human rights, it also leads to the surmise that the Union government had itself sanctioned the genocidal policy to eliminate the Sikh separatist threat.

It must be obvious that all lofty discussions on the “basic features” and “basic framework” of the Constitution, which even the Legislature cannot destroy, would become meaningless if we do not start with the inflexible premise that the fundamental “right to life” of citizens, which the State must protect in all circumstances against all arbitrary violations, is the heart of India’s constitution. The Supreme Court of India has , in a large number of cases, expounded on the permissible limits within which the Legislature may abridge, but not abrogate, the fundamental rights of citizens without damaging the basic structure of the Constitution. We do not have to examine these decisions to conclude that the entire edifice of “basic features” of the constitution would become dead letter if the State is allowed to abdicate its obligation to safeguard the “right to life” against arbitrary violations. Derogation from the fundamental right to life under Article 21 is impermissible in any situation by the effect of 44^th amendment of the Indian constitution. Article 21 prohibits deprivation of life and liberty except within the procedure established by law. It is a guarantee which cannot be suspended even in a state of emergency proclaimed under Articles 358 and 359 of the Constitution. Article 22 of the Constitution guarantees that no person will be arrested and detained without clear grounds under the law, to be made known to the person, and in all events the arrested would retain the right to consult and be defended by a counsel of choice. Sections 67 and 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure require that all arrested persons be produced before a magistrate within twenty‑four hours of arrest, not to be kept in police custody for more than 15 days and afterwards not longer than 60 or 90 days in judicial custody without the right to bail. Under sections 330 and 331 of the Indian Penal Code, custodial torture inflicted with the view to obtain confessions or any information is an offence punishable with imprisonment. Wrongful confinement is also a punishable offence under Section 346 of the Indian Penal Code. These are the rights which the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ‑ ICCPR ‑ to which India is a signatory, also guarantees under Articles 6, 7, 9 and 16.

The Working Group on enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has been annually reporting to the Commission of Human Rights since 1981. Its report to the Commission’s 1990 session, which covers inquiries on 2,700 disappearances from 41 countries including India, insists that impunity is the single most important factor that explains the unrelenting persistence of disappearances in many troubled regions of the world.

The 1997 Annual Report of the UN Working Group on Disappearances refers to the writ petition before the Supreme Court on secret cremations, and recommends that “all persons alleged to have perpetrated an act of enforced disappearance should be brought to justice, in accordance with the article 14” of the UN declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the General Assembly without a vote on 18 December 1992, and that “pursuant to article 7 of the Declaration, no circumstances whatsoever may be invoked to justify enforced disappearances.”

Further, the annual report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions for 1997 concluded the following for India: “The perpetrators of extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions reportedly continue to enjoy virtual impunity”. The Special Rapporteur also referred to the letter from the government of India dated 22 November 1995 professing its commitment to openness, transparency and full co-operation.

The government of India has also received a communication from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ‑ CERD ‑ , in 1996, which points out that the Clause 19 of the Protection of Human Rights Act which prevents the Commission from directly investigating allegations of abuse involving the armed forces, and also the Clause 36(2) which debars the Commission from investigating cases that are more than a year old contribute to a climate of impunity.

Newspapers have reported that the Central government proposes to amend laws relating to “Disturbed Areas” so as to extend their provisions of immunity to the Punjab police. More concrete suggestions in this regard have come from the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.[10] Notification of an area under the Disturbed Areas Act enables the government to enforce the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958 - AFSPA - whose Section 4(a) allows even the non-commissioned officers of the military and quasi-military forces to shoot to kill even on suspicion of hostile intentions. The draconian power is nothing but a quasi-judicial extension of arbitrary execution. Under section 6 of the Act, persons and even the state governments wishing to institute criminal proceedings against members of the armed forces for abuses must first seek the permission of the Central Government. Section 2© of the AFSPA says that the words not defined in the Act will carry the meanings assigned to them in the Army Act of 1950. The chapter five of the Army Act confers on the personnel of the Indian army extensive privileges, including immunity from arrest for civil offences. The chapter provides that even murder and rape, if done on active service, would be triable only by court martial. This means that the personnel covered by the AFSPA will, if tried at all, be covered by the court‑martial, leaving no civil law remedies to the victims. Now the proposal is to extend these powers, privileges and the immunity also to the police forces. If these proposals succeed, India might as well become a military dictatorship. In this context, we should recall the Human Rights Committee’s comments offered at the hearing of India’s second report on its adherence to the ICCPR. The Committee said that these legislations effectively derogated from the right to life and other rights in the covenant. One member of the Committee said: “These laws greatly concern me because when we give a person powers and for very subjective reasons powers to be able to deny the lives of citizens that is far too much power. I think it is excessive, particularly when that person is immune and can act with impunity because he or she will not be punished. I am convinced that these laws are contrary to Article 6 of the Covenent”.

In this connection, we must recapitulate Amnesty International’s recommendations to the government of India:

· to remove the requirement of sanction for the prosecution of police or armed forces personnel under section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure; to remove other provisions requiring sanction for prosecution of officials, for example under section 45 of the Criminal Procedure Code; and,

· to remove the requirement of sanction for the prosecution of police or armed forces personnel under section 7 of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

We must also draw attention to the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, specially to its paragraphs 11 and 21, and Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra‑Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions’ paragraphs 1, 3, 9 and 19.

These are some of the principles deriving from the India’s constitutional commitments and its obligations under international instruments that underlie our demand that the government must allow an independent and through investigation into all complaints of illegal abductions, custodial torture, disappearances, summary executions and illegal cremations that have taken place in the last decade and a half of unrest in Punjab. The issue in hand is justice, which to deserve its name, must be an open process. The principles violated must be reinstated and vindicated, which presupposes total openness and transparency. The real purpose of justice is rehabilitation, of principles and even of people who have offended them; punishment being only a means to that end. Let us not forget that judicial justice, as codified in laws and administered by tribunals, is a historical, man-made institution, contingent in its forms, but built on the timeless foundation of human conscience. Schematically, people have ceded to the State their residual autonomy on the understanding that its institutions would ensure freedom, justice and security, impartially, according to the normative standards applicable to all, and in the broad light of the day. Sovereignty of the State suggests itself to be inviolable so long as the State does not rebound from these terms of its compact with the citizens.

Sandhu’s suicide and the campaign for immunity:

It is unfortunate that the vigorous campaigning for immunity, after it has been established that thousands have been eliminated in illegal custody, has been mounted even as India celebrates the fiftieth year of its independence. The dichotomy reveals that the leaders of our country have altogether forgotten the important role human rights concerns had played in guiding India’s freedom struggle. The Union government’s attitude on this issue, as also the overwhelming support it has received from the media and the established political circles, show merit in the argument of Punjab police officers that they have been acting largely under a policy that was approved not only by the Central government but also by other independent institutions, even if tacitly. There is no scope here to quote long passages from the newspaper articles, discussions in parliament and the Supreme Court’s numerous judgements from the period of insurgency in Punjab to show that the mental attitude of the ruling elite in India, formed in the matrix of the separatist threat, supported or even reveled in police “excesses”. I have already referred to March 1988 amendment of the Indian Parliament which had selectively abrogated the rights to life for the people in Punjab. Judiciary too has its share of responsibility, but not in the sense suggested by police officials and their sycophants. In their “horror and shock” at the findings of illegal cremations, the judges of the Supreme Court failed to recognise the unhappy truth that the extrajudicial elimination of suspected terrorists and secessionists was a monstrous consummation of the same Will of the State that underlay the legislative objectives of TADA, which the Supreme Court so vigorously upheld. I would give one more example from the recent past to show how aggressive and extensive is the support which the police officials, responsible for myriad murders, receive from the enlightened sections of public opinion in India when they brazenly ask for immunity from prosecution in the name of national security.

On 24 May 1997, the newspapers reported that Ajit Singh Sandhu, former Superintendent of Tarn Taran police district, committed suicide by throwing himself before a running train. Sandhu had been imprisoned for few months on charges, established by judicial inquiries, that involved illegal abductions, torture and elimination in custody of people like Jaswant Singh Khalra and Kuljit Singh Dhat, a relative of Bhagat Singh, the famous revolutionary from the pre-independence era. The circumstances of his reported suicide were suspicious. He had consumed alcohol; had driven to the railway track in his own car, and a short suicide note which he left behind said “it is better to die than to live in this shame”. Sandhu had been a trusted lieutenant of KPS Gill, former Director General of Punjab police who had led India’s ruthless war against the Sikh secessionist militancy in the State. Accused with all these extra-judicial executions and hasty cremations, Sandhu would have had no choice but to establish the line of command under which he had carried out the executions in his district. There should have been an inquiry into his reported suicide. But KPS Gill, now retired, seized the opportunity to launch his campaign against “an utterly compromised human rights lobby”. He called a press conference on 24^th evening “not to express grief”, but to discuss the larger political and policy issues that arise from Sandhu’s suicide. And he discussed them passionately, poetically and in terms of high drama. The newspapers across the country carried the full text of his statement that inveighed the nation for ingratitude towards its “heroes” like Ajit Singh Sandhu who had saved India from the brink of disintegration. It castigated the people for permitting to thrive on the Indian soil the human rights activists “who will work with any cause that serves their personal ends, whether criminal, political or secessionist”. The statement chided the State for not “educating itself on how to tackle individuals and groups trying to destroy it”, and went on to tell the parliament to bring about the necessary legal amendments which would protect other courageous officers of Punjab from the kind of humiliation that apparently drove Sandhu to suicide. The statement said that the bud of Khalistan had been nipped through the achievements of officers like Sandhu, which prevented the loss of Kashmir and the eventual balkanisation of India.

On 27 May, the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab issued a statement to discuss from its own perspective the issues raised by Gill’s statement. This was necessary, as the Committee was not only directly involved in collating and verifying the evidence on illegal cremations, it had also been directly attacked. But no newspaper, with one or two exceptions, carried the statement. Some journalists called back to say that although they liked the statement personally, it did not harmonise with the editorial guidelines. Others wanted to go through the original documents on illegal cremations, to be sure that our arguments were based on “concrete and established facts”. They copied documents from the Committee’s files, wasting many hours, and vanished. Promised stories did not appear. Meanwhile, the campaign launched by Gill avalanched into a crusade. Responsible political leaders began to accuse the National Human Rights Commission of being prejudiced against the police. There were warnings of police revolt, and threats to break the government in Punjab if the Akali Dal, which is leading a coalition government in the State along with the Bharatiya Janata Party, did not unambiguously declare itself for the police. The leader of the BJP’s parliamentary group in Rajya Sabha - Upper House of Parliament - wrote: “Sandhu was not just left to fend for himself, the State abandoned him and - to my mind, much worse - his incarceration and humiliation were used to deflect attention.[11] Tavleen Singh, a senior journalist, explained in her column: “Murderers of Sandhu are the “human rightswallahs”. They have been unable to see that it was war in Tarn Taran: In fighting it if Sandhu broke a few rules, there was no other way. In his subsequent letter to the Prime Minister, also published in its entirety, KPS Gill asked for a legislation that defines “appropriate criteria to judge the actions of those who fought this war on behalf of the Indian State”. “Until the necessary criteria are sufficiently debated, defined and legislated, immediate steps should be taken to ensure that the pattern of humiliation through litigation and trial by the media is prevented forthwith”. He repeated the insinuation that “for those who were comprehensively defeated in the battle for Khalistan, public interest litigation has become the most convenient strategy for vendetta.”

Provocative as these arguments were, there was nothing substantially new in them: They had been the stock-in-trade of the Nazis, and others before and after them who tried to save their countries from “the subversives” by genocidal methods. Pakistan under investigation for genocide of Hindus in Bangladesh told the International Commission of Jurists that they had only been killed as “enemies of the State”. In January 1973, the American puppet in South Vietnam, was telling Oriana Fallaci that he prayed for the bombing of Hanoi to continue. “They have a purpose, and if we want to achieve that purpose, we have to bomb. Mademoiselle, speaking as a soldier, I tell you that the shorter the war the less atrocious it is.” Nguyen Van Thieu was a Vietnamese, even if southern. K. P. S. Gill is a Punjabi, and an Indian who told the Indian Express: “it was an error that terrorism was brought to an end too quickly”. He went on to add: “the fight against militancy in Punjab was one of the most humane operations ever”.[12] They stalk the same logic: “What are fifty thousand or hundred thousand people dead for a country? Don’t few hundred thousand people die every few minutes on this planet without any cause?” It was the same logic that provided the ideological backbone to the “Dirty War” in Argentina between 1976 and 1983 when the junta murdered thousands, imprisoned and tortured scores of thousands, and exiled almost half a million citizens. The theory of counter-insurgency which Roger Trinquier systematised derived from the colonial experiences of the Western powers particularly the French in Vietnam and Algeria. The doctrine defines the strategy of counterinsurgency “as an interlocking system of actions - political, economic, psychological, military.” Because the rebel organisations are clandestine and their weapon of choice is terrorism, their destruction requires unconventional and ruthless pursuits. A captured terrorist must be tortured for the knowledge of his organisation, and if he cannot be intimidated or induced to become a stooge, must be killed. The groups which do not sympathise with these imperatives of national security, particularly human rights groups, are also subversives whose destruction is also necessary to restore the pristine powers and the moral supremacy of the Nation-State. The defenders of the State, particularly its soldiers must always remain alert against the enemy which is ubiquitous and fights the State not only by terrorism but also by other nefarious and indirect ways. When security forces in Argentina abducted a severely disabled girl-student restricted to a wheelchair, some journalists asked how the young woman could possibly be a terrorist. General Videla had responded: “...a terrorist is not just someone with a gun or a bomb, but also someone who spreads ideas that are contrary to Western and Christian civilisation.”[13]

From the very beginning of my researches in Punjab, I have been meeting important officers of the government, politicians, and journalists who privately admit that extrajudicial executions had become necessary in the situation that obtained in Punjab. I remember the words of a very eloquent exponent of this view point in Punjab: Owner and editor of Hind Samachar group of newspapers, Vijay Chopra. He told me: “No witness is willing to depose. No judge is willing to convict. No prosecutor is ready to argue. Investigating officers are policemen who live with their families in the towns and villages of Punjab. Terrorists kidnap and kill their family members. How can they investigate and gather evidence to convict the terrorists? In this situation, when policemen catch terrorists who have committed heinous crimes, they kill them and put out stories of their death in armed encounters. Do they have another option?” This is the logic, so convincing to the susceptible but so pernicious.

Law enforcing officers must know that it is no use telling the courts that so and so is a leading terrorist. Courts are supposed to operate on the rules of evidence. TADA modified the established norms of criminal trial system in India, going to the extent of shifting the presumption of guilt against the accused. It even allowed custodial confessions as admissible evidence. Punjab registered 17,529 cases under the TADA since its promulgation in 1985 up to 31 July 1994.[14] In how many cases did the prosecution marshal the minimum necessary evidence to procure conviction?

Violent crime has been endemic to Punjab. Private notings of British officials who served in the state are full of references to their difficulties in handling the problem by the book. But they rose to the challenge. The system of maintaining a surveillance register No. 10 of bad characters was created in 1861 by E. A. Prinsep, the Commissioner of Amritsar division. Another District Officer posted at Jalandhar gives elaborate description of the police campaign against crime, based on careful selection of Station House Officers, cultivation of reliable informers, and persuasion of villagers to testify. Gerald Savage worked with the “Special Cell” to deal with organised crime. “This meant living in rest houses and never really gaining civilisation for months on end”.[15] These standards of police work, which had been evolved in Punjab, were given short shrift by the team of officers responsible for anti-terrorist operations who had the aptitude for drama, but little training, inclination or the compulsion to do the dog’s work. Punjab at the beginning of the insurgency became a stage for their vainglory. In the end, they could only catch and kill.

In the middle of the last century, Sleeman and his team had succeeded in eradicating the menace of thugee from India. It would have been easy to eliminate thugs without legal ceremony. But Sleeman’s team opted for the arduous way, compiling lists of gang members, documenting incidents, procuring witnesses, and collating evidence that would stand judicial scrutiny. Between 1831 and 1837 more than three thousand thugs were convicted. If the officers of the Punjab police failed in bringing the terrorists to book, in spite of TADA and other draconian legislations like the Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, their obsession with extra-judicial activities to the negation of arduous and lustreless tasks of regular police work, must squarely take the blame.

Another suicide that was ignored

9 July1997 issue of the Tribune, a newspaper published from Chandigarh, reported another suicide: A fifty-five years old former head of village counsel, Ajaib Singh Thodhian, committed suicide by taking poison within the precincts of Amritsar’s Golden Temple. A suicide note, which he wrote just before consuming poison, gave the reasons for his suicide: His son Kulwinder Singh had been picked up by the Amritsar police in November 1991. Father Ajaib Singh made all the efforts to trace him, but in vain. He moved the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, then the Supreme Court, and personally met senior officials of the Punjab government including four Chief Ministers, Beant Singh, Harcharan Singh Brar, Mrs Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, and Prakash Singh Badal. But no action was taken. Ajaib Singh Thodhian’s suicide note said that he was ending his life over his “disappointment in gaining justice”. The note also referred to the suicide of Ajit Singh Sandhu, “a sinner who had ended his life by jumping in front of a train”. But Ajaib Singh Thodian himself, the note said, was committing suicide as a “disappointed man”. This report, published in the Tribune and other vernacular dailies in Punjab, was altogether ignored by the national media which had orchestrated the massive publicity campaign against human rights groups and for legal immunity to police officials following Sandhu’s suicide.

The CCDP: The organization & the agenda:

It was in this background that the proposal to form a Coordination Committee of various human rights groups, involved in Punjab, was first mooted. The Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab came formally into existence on 9 November 1997 when, in a meeting held in Chandigarh, the following human rights organisations and the political groups that felt sufficiently involved with the agenda decided to join hands:

The Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, Punjab Human Rights Organisation, International Human Rights Organisation, Movement against State Repression, World Human Rights Protection Council, Human Rights and Democracy Forum, Lawyers for Human Rights, the Khalra Action Committee, Bhartiya Kisan Union, Akali Dal (Wadala), Akali Dal (Mann), Akali Dal (Panthik), Punjab Janata Morcha, Bahujan Samaj Party, Internationalist Democratic Party, Sikh Students Federation, (Mehta, Chawla), the Babbar Akali Dal and the Akal Federation. The World Sikh Council, which came into existence later, also joined the Coordination,

Those who joined the Committee in their individual capacity are: Dr. (Mrs.) Sukhjit Kaur Gill, Baba Sarabjot Singh Bedi, Sukhjinder Singh, Mokham Singh, Gurtej Singh, Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon, Dalbir Singh, Col (rtd) Bhagat Singh, Jaspal Singh Siddhu, Maj. Gen. (rtd) Narinder Singh, Gurdip Singh, Editor Az Di Awaz, Gurbachan Singh, editor Des Punjab and Joginder Singh, editor Spokesman.

The Incident Report Pro‑forma and the hazards of human rights documentation:

The Committee has circulated a Design for Incident Report Pro‑forma, which it has developed after consulting formats used by several international human rights organisations to receive complaints of violations. Volunteers of the Committee have already for some time been engaged in getting the pro-forma filled to elicit primary evidence of abductions, disappearances, extra-judicial executions and secret disposal of dead bodies carried out by the State agencies in every district of Punjab. This is the most vital part of the Committee’s documentation work, and is also most difficult and full of unpredictable hazards. Volunteers engaged in this work have to be specially trained to ensure reliability of complaints/claims, and have to move from village to village to personally verify and cross-check them by talking to the complainants and their witnesses. While these inquiries have to follow the principles of open and transparent work, the volunteers have to take a good measure of care to protect the information from leading to possible breach of confidentiality, privacy and safety of complainants and their witnesses. The nature of our inquiries on the antecedents and the circumstances of violations, and the identities of persons responsible for them and their motives have produced panic reactions in official circles that fear exposure. Our volunteers involved in the field work and the lawyers who are pursuing the cases of police atrocities are being threatened and harassed. Some of them have even been illegally detained, manhandled in custody and implicated in fabricated cases. Important witnesses in the case of Jaswant Singh Khalra’s abduction, custodial torture and elimination got kidnapped and implicated in spurious cases. Attempts were made to even arrest Mrs. Khalra in concocted cases which, however, had to be withdrawn when an independent inquiry established that they had been fabricated.

The Peoples’ Commission on Human Rights Violations in Punjab:

The first convention of the Committee, dedicated to the memory of Jaswant Singh Khalra, was held on 10 December 97. The convention, presided by former judge of the Supreme Court Kuldip Singh, called on the Punjab government led by the Akali Dal to constitute a Truth Commission to investigate all reports of human rights violations in the State, as it had pledged in its election manifesto. The convention also decided to form a Peoples’ Commission to undertake these inquiries if the Punjab government reneged on its electoral pledge. The State government responded by declaring that the past ought to be buried and forgotten, and that it had no intention to set up a Commission to conduct such inquiries. On 26 April 1998, the Committee announced the formation of a panel of three judges to constitute the Peoples’ Commission, headed by D. S. Tewatia, former Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court. H. Suresh, a retired judge of the Bombay High Court and Jaspal Singh, former judge of the Delhi High Court, are the other two judges on the panel. The following are the issues of inquiry and their terms of reference:

1. The Commission would examine the complaints of illegal abductions, custodial torture, enforced disappearances, summary executions and en massse illegal cremations, and to give its findings on: (a) whether from 1979 to 1997 the agencies of the State carried out and tolerated - directly or indirectly - any of the above mentioned atrocities and thereby committed violation of human rights as guaranteed under the constitution of India and various international covenants and declarations. (b) whether the State agencies/ individuals have prima facie committed any offense under the law of the land or international law. © The Commission would further suggest the remedies available to the victims of the aforementioned atrocities including their entitlement to compensation from the State and its agencies.

2. The security forces in Punjab were equipped with extraordinary powers to meet the law and order situation, in particular arising out of the alleged militant activities. Draconian powers were given to the investigating agencies to prosecute the individuals and the groups suspected to be engaged in violence. The Commission would go into the causes and the reasons for the utter failure of the State and its agencies in the performance of their duties as required under the rule of law.

The Peoples’ Commission on Human Rights Violations in Punjab held its first sitting on 8^th, 9^th and 10^th of August 1998, and admitted about ninety complaints of illegal abductions by the State agencies leading to either disappearances or killings in faked armed encounters. A Secretariat of the Commission, specially constituted for this purpose, had already scrutinised the complaints received before placing them for examination before the Commission. The Commission, being satisfied that prima facie the complaints are justified, has requested the State agencies and the officials against whom complaints have been made to explain their stand on these complaints and to substantiate their claims by testimonial and documentary evidence. The Commission would also call for the following official records: the cremation ground records of each police district insofar as they relate to cremations carried out by the police; the municipal records pertaining to dead bodies disposed of by the police; the records of each police district pertaining to custodial deaths and encounters; press releases including photographs issued by the police or the state government relating to deaths in custody, escapes and deaths in armed encounters. The Commission would then go on to cross examine material witnesses from both the sides before giving its findings within the mandate of its terms of reference. The manual of rules that guide the functioning of the People’s Commission is enlosed as appendix B.

As you are all aware, the first sitting of the People’s Commission has generated hysterical reactions and several political parties and other individuals connected with the establishment have asked for its ban. Before concluding, let us consider the substance of the arguments for and against the People’s Commission that are raging in Punjab today.

It is unfortunate that the opponents of the People’s Commission rely on deliberate distortion of facts regarding the background and the working of the People’s Commission, which are part of meticulous documentation and record. There is also a petition pending before the Punjab High Court that seeks a writ of mandamus on the State to ban the People’s Commission. We shall not discuss the specific aspects of the matter before the High Court, but shall only review the basic arguments.

The main thrust of the propaganda offensive against the People’s Commission lies in projecting those who were responsible for unspeakable violations of human rights as warriors, soldiers of a war for the preservation of India's unity. The obverse side of this projection lies in denigrating the human rights organisations as allies of India's enemies. The offensive is an attempt to arouse nationalist and patriotic emotions for purposes that have extremely negative implications for the country's future. The soul of the Indian Republic lives in a democratic constitution, civil liberties constituting its cornerstone. Violations of fundamental rights, consequently, undermine the very basis on which the Indian Republic is founded. The threat to the territorial integrity of the nation arose, in the first instance, from the alienation of sections of people; a direct outcome of the myopic and divisive politics, which the ruling elite pursued for its own narrow vested interests. Cessation of divisive politics, coupled with reconciliation based on substantial evaluation of the issues that underlie the unrest, can remove the threats to nation's territorial integrity on a permanent basis. The refrain of the offensive, however, is exactly the opposite; it is being claimed that the reign of terror, is the only way to preserve country's territorial integrity. Is it at all possible for a country to keep its own people under a regime of terror without doing grievous injury to its democratic structure and without converting transitory threats into permanent ones? It is therefore imperative that all those who owe allegiance to the Indian Republic realize that if the battle for civil liberties is lost, the overcoming of the myriad threats to Indian sovereignty and territorial integrity, which exist or may arise, would become all the more awesome. Therefore, we call on all sections of the people of Punjab and the rest of India, to join our efforts to ensure that State agencies account for their human rights offences and that their victims are not denied justice.

The absurdity of the arguments against the People’s Commission is epitomized by the fact that the petition that seeks its ban has been filed under Article 226 of the Constitution that gives the High Courts wide powers to reach injustice wherever it is found, especially for the enforcement of any of the rights conferred by Part III of the Constitution. Before invoking 226 for any writ, the party must clearly show the real or imminent infringement of a vested right. Although the petitioner claims to “represent the sentiments of millions of citizens of India”, he has failed to establish the real or imminent infringement of a right vested either in himself or in any other person, group of persons, or any institution. The petition also fails to establish a concomittal legal or public duty in the authority whose lapse should warrant the High Court to issue a writ. In the event, no writ can issue. This is the law under a plethora of rulings.[16]

The aims and objectives of the People’s Commission derive legitimacy from the Indian constitutional guarantees that are sacrosanct and can only be curtailed under the law - meaning statute/statutory rules or statutory regulation as defined in AIR 1963 SC 1295 - on the establishment that their exercise aim at undermining the security of the State or overthrowing it. That is the law since Romesh Thappar Vs State of Madras, 1950 SCR 594: AIR 1950 SC 124: 51 Cri. LJ 1514, para 10. Rangarajan Vs P. Jagjivan Ram 1989 (2) SCC 574 explains that “the freedom of expression means the right to express one’s opinion by words of mouth, writing, printing, picture or in any other manner. It would thus include the freedom of communication and the right to propagate or publish opinion.” (p. 582) Quoting Walter Lippmann, the judgment further says: “When men act on the principle of intelligence, they go out to find the facts… When they ignore it, they go inside themselves and find out what is there. They elaborate their prejudice instead of increasing their knowledge.” And that, “The State cannot prevent open discussion and open expression, however hateful to its policies.” The judgment further explains that: “…freedom of expression cannot be suppressed on account of threat of demonstration and processions or threats of violence. That would tantamount to negation of the rule of law and surrender to blackmail and intimidation. It is the duty of the State to protect the freedom of expression since it is a liberty guaranteed against the State. The State cannot plead its inability to handle the hostile audience problem. It is its obligatory duty to prevent it and protect the freedom of expression.” (p. 599) Naraindas Indurkhya vs. State of Madhya Pradesh – (1974 4 SCC 788: 1974 SCC (Cri) 816, para 23: (1974) 3 SCR 650 – declares: “It is our firm belief, nay, a conviction which constitutes one of the basic values of a free society to which we are wedded under our Constitution, that their must be freedom not only for the thought that we cherish, but also for the thought that we hate.” Bhagwati Charan Shukla vs. Provincial government – AIR 1947 Nag 1: Cri LJ 994 -, later endorsed in Ramesh vs. Union of India – 1988 1 SCC 668: 1988 SCC (Cri) 226, says: “That the effect of the words must be judged from the standards of reasonable, strong-minded, firm and courageous men, and not those of weak and vacillating minds, nor of those who scent danger in ever hostile point of view.” (p. 586). Both Romesh Thapar Vs State of Madras and S. Rangarajan vs. P. Jagjivan Ram explain precisely when the freedom of expression will conflict with the limitations and the dangers enumerated under Article 19(2). However, those anticipated dangers and limitations should not be remote, conjectural or far-fetched.

The Supreme Court and the High Courts in this country have clearly recognized the intervention of social activists in matters concerning life and liberty. Bandhua Mukti Morcha (1984) (3) SCC 161, Sheela Barse vs. Union of India – AIR 1988 Supreme Court 2211, and more recently the matter of illegal cremations carried out by the security forces in Punjab, which the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab filed before the Supreme Court of India, uphold the principle that such activists, individuals and human rights organizations are entitled to collect information that can form the basis of intervention under Articles 32 and 226. This recognition of their role synchronizes with the mandate that the government should respect and facilitate their admittance to sources of information, even in sensitive areas. Clear instructions in Sheela Barse vs. Union of India – AIR 1986 SC 1773 – explain these concomitant obligations of the government.

In India and abroad, inquiries into human rights violations by Peoples’ Commissions have for long been routine. The Indian National Congress had itself set up a Commission to investigate repression in Punjab following the agitation against the Rowlett Act, although the Hunter Commission, an official body, was already going into the matter. Mahatma Gandhi himself worked with Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das to produce a report that differed with the findings of the Hunter Commission on many substantial issues. The Motilal Nehru Committee, which later contributed so significantly to the writing of the Indian Constitution, was the Congress alternative to the Simon Commission's constitutional proposals. Jawaharlal Nehru's Planning Committee, the precursor to the Planning Commission of the later day, was a direct challenge to the Royal Commission on Labour in India, known as the "Whitley Commission" that had been set up in 1929. The Sapru Committee’s Report of 1945, which later contributed significantly to the Chapter III of the Indian Constitution, was also a private initiative. The Committee had been appointed by an "All Parties Conference" in 1944, when the War had not yet ended, Japan having surrendered only in August 1945. INA was still marching with the declared objective to capture the Red Fort. Yet no body talked about banning the Committee. More recently, there have been numerous non-official inquiries into serious allegations of human rights violations and official acquiescence into orchestrated violence against the minority communities and other under-privileged groups of people in various parts of India. Orchestrated pogroms and communal riots in Delhi, Meerut, Aligarh, Karnataka, Ayodhya, Maharashtra have been investigated by Peoples’ Commissions. Justice H. Suresh (Retired), a member of the Peoples’ Commission in Punjab, himself belonged to a Peoples’ Tribunal that investigated the Bombay riots of December 1992 and January 1993, while the official Commission called Shri Krishna Commission was already conducting its proceedings. The Peoples’ Tribunal submitted its report within six months of its constitution whereas the official Shri Krishna report took six years to make public exactly the same findings. The Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights (IPT), which authorized the unofficial investigation, was established in 1993 as a permanent body to counter governmental apathy and the judicial red-tape by initiating campaigns and public interest litigation on the strength of such inquiries into human rights and environmental issues. The Indian Peoples’ Tribunal has so far undertaken eleven such investigations and has affiliated with numerous other fact-finding commissions. And here is this petition that prays for a writ under Article 226 to ban the first genuine peoples’ initiative to investigate the reports of human rights violations in Punjab.

If any group of people or individuals do not like the Peoples’ Commission, there is no compulsion on them to recognize it or to participate in its work. No agency of the State can claim the right or the duty to ensure that any individual or collection of individuals do not question or talk about or reach their own conclusions about any matter of public importance. How can victims of police repression be prevented from expressing themselves to the Peoples’ Commission if they so wish? Under what law can the Peoples’ Commission be prevented from seeking response from policemen on complaints of human rights violations that are publicly made? The officials are free to ignore or entertain the queries. It is open to the Peoples’ Commission to reach its conclusions even without their participation.

Human rights and the Indian State: Points for reflection:

The issue in Punjab is not Khalistan, but whether the Indian state can demonstrate the legitimacy of its role in Punjab. Those who corkscrew unbridled police powers and patriotic objectives into tautological equations, should pay a little attention to the important role human rights concerns had played in guiding India’s freedom struggle. The swadeshi movement at Bengal’s partition in 1905 was openly violent. Viceroy Minto demanded a free hand to put down the wave of terrorism. John Morley, the Secretary of State, asked if his government was going to be equally harsh with the Englishmen who committed violence against Indians. Otherwise: “our pharisaic glorification of the stern justice of the British raj is windy nonsense”. Those days, the police did not fake encounters; revolutionaries were deported. Even then the question of evidence, as the following letter from Morley shows, was a matter of scrutiny: “...Of course, I know that you will take all possible pains not to seize the wrong men... Your evidence which is to reach me soon, will be scanned by me with sharp eye...”[17]

Under Gandhi’s leadership, Punjab led the second phase of India’s freedom struggle on the Rowlatt Act, which provided for the trial of revolutionary offenders by judges without juries. It also proposed measures to gag the press. The Rowlatt Act was the outcome of recommendations by the Sedition Committee, headed by High Court judge Sidney Rowlatt, that had investigated the official information on the revolutionary conspiracies of the war years involving the Pan-Islamic groups committed to the restoration of Caliphate, members of the Gadhr, and the Communist underground. But Gandhi’s understanding of civil liberties would not allow him to brook with the provisions of the Act. He maintained: “Liberty of speech means that it is unassailed, even when the speech hurts; liberty of the press can be said to be truly respected only when the press can comment in the severest terms upon and even misrepresent matters... Freedom of association is truly respected when assemblies of people can discuss even revolutionary projects, the State relying upon the force of public opinion and the civil police, not the savage military at its disposal, to crush any actual outbreak of revolution...”[18] So, Gandhi declared: “no self-respecting people could submit to the Act”, and launched a satyagraha on the issue which became violent in parts of the country, mainly in Punjab. The bloody repression, epitomised by Jalianwalabag episode, sealed the fate of the British rule in India. Dyer’s bragging about his role in restoring law and order, and the “cold-blooded approval of that deed” in England, turned Jawaharlal Nehru decisively against the British empire. Nehru claimed to have returned home after seven years at Harrow, Cambridge and Inner Temple “more an Englishman than an Indian”. Nehru wrote about the impression a chance encounter with Dyer’s bragging had made on him: “I realised then, more vividly than I had ever done before, how brutal and immoral imperialism was and how it had eaten into the souls of the British upper classes.”[19] Subhash Chandra Bose, who had passed the ICS in 1920, decided “to chuck this rotten service and dedicate myself whole-heartedly to the country’s cause”, when the English people as a whole appeared to support what General Dyer had done.[20] As the movement escalated and converged into the Khilafat agitation, Chelmsford demanded extraordinary powers to suppress it. Edwin Montogu, then secretary of State, called for reflection: “...There is nothing so easy at any particular moment as to govern through the police. It is far simpler than any other method. It requires less thought, less circumlocution. That is why I have always thought that O’Dwyer’s success in the Punjab so cheap a success.” The Viceroy complained about extremists and revolutionaries who would not be satisfied no matter what reforms the government offered. Montagu’s feelings were different. He had more respect for revolutionaries than for the Congress agitators: The Congress agitators steered clear of crime. But they also lacked political wisdom, real thought and the genuine urge for social reform. The extremists, on the other hand, were desirous of a genuinely self-governing India. They resorted to crime without criminal motives, as martyrs to their cause. The Secretary of State also insisted on a thorough probe into the ways of the secret police: “...I shall never be satisfied until some investigation is made of the methods and powers... of the CID...”[21]

We must also remember the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, spoken by him when the British government clamped down to frustrate the Congress call to “quit India” in 1942: “A government that has to rely on the Criminal Law Amendment Act and similar laws, that suppresses the press and the literature, that bans hundreds of organisations, that keeps people in prison without trial, and that does so many other things that are happening in India today, is a government that has ceased to have even a shadow of a justification for its existence.”

Nehru’s conclusion on the cessation of justification for a State’s existence follows from a view of sovereignty which can only be exercised indivisibly with the fundamental rights of the people. This view of sovereignty, which guided the evolution of Indian nationalism, insists on a set of prerogatives every citizen is entitled to in his urge of positive self-assertion, the State being their guarantor and guardian. The reality of widespread human rights abuses in India today can no longer sustain the idealistic ingredients of constitutional democracy that we claim to be. This reality in conjunction with the metaphysical abstraction of nationhood, as a supra-mundane category that justifies abuse of State power, can only beget unmitigable evil. The Greeks had the concept of hubris which derived from a notion of negative vigour that spills over the just bounds, and had to be punished by a super-Olympian law to which even Zeus must submit. The concept permeated Plato’s idea of justice. It went on to influence the philosophies of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, who wrote his City of God in response to the sack of Rome in 410: Wicked Goths, the pagans, would meet their punishment at the Last Judgement. However, when a Christian Emperor Theodosius in 390 ordered the massacre of his fellow-Christians in Milan, St. Ambrose refused to hold the Mass for the Emperor until, divested of the purple, he performed public penance. Ambrose’s letter to Theodosius on this occasion compares with Vidura’s counsel to the blind Emperor of the Mahabharata: “Improper conduct under the confidence that “I have gained my kingdom” would not pay... A king who terrorises his people, would be rejected by them no matter what be the magnitude of his possessions and his might. An unjust king gets destroyed the same way, as clouds get scattered by strong wind. His kingdom would shrink like a piece of leather on fire.”[22]

New Delhi Secretariat: 56 Todarmal road, (Bengali Market) N Delhi. Tel. 3714531

(Specially relevant would be details of hostile interaction with the security forces since 1984.)

(Note: Specify if you do not wish to divulge the names of witnesses for the present. In which case do not fill this column.)

Appeals made to local and national authorities. Give details. Photocopies if possible:

Was there ever any report in the press about the disappeared/ dead prior to this incident? Yes/ No

Have you had any official or unofficial communications with police officials concerning the fate of the person at any time? Yes/No

Has any other person known to you has also "disappeared"/ abducted/ reported killed in armed encounter in connection with the reported incident? Yes/No

Was any property (structures, possessions, live stock or other chattel) damaged/ destroyed/ stolen/ expropriated in the course of the incident or subsequently? Yes/ No

Has the event of "disappearance" had any psychological/medical consequences in the family? Yes/No:

Has there been any death in the family connected/ subsequent to the event of "disappearance"? Yes/No:

[1] H. M. Seervai, Constitutional Law of India: A critical commentary, Vol. I, Fourth edition 1991, Bombay, pp. I-ix

[2] W. H. Morris-Jones, Parliament in India, p. 7

[3] Govt. of India to the Secretary of State, 25 August 1911, Cmd. 5979, para 7, quoted in Indian Constitutional Documents, Munshi Papers II, Historical Introduction by A. K. Mazumdar, pp. xvii-xviii; A. B. Keith, A Constitutional History of India, p. 282

[4] K. M. Munshi, Indian Constitutional Documents, Vol. I, pp. 7-8, 17-18; H. F. Owen, Negotiating the Lucknow Pact, Journal of Asian Studies, May 1972, pp. 561-87

[5] The Tribune, 30 July 1986, PM for free hand to the police: help promised to Barnala; 18 August 86, Police given six months to finish terrorists: Police wants more powers; 12 February 87, BSF pins hopes on Operation Bird

[6] The Times of India, 11 April 1988, Is the Tiwana Report only for the record?; The Indian Express, 9 April 1988, 59^th Amendment condemned; Onlooker, October 16-31, 1988, Extra-judicial executions in Punjab; Sunday Mail, April 17-23, 1988, Tiwana Report blames police, & May 29 - June 4, 1988, Tortured but not subdued; the Indian Express, 10 April 1989, Government not to allow Sarbat Khalsa: Gill; The Times of India, 8 April 1989, Report on “State Terrorism” in Punjab released; The Tribune, 8 April 1989, Report on State terrorism; The Hindustan Times, 20 February 1989, Police atrocities in Punjab alleged; The Times of India, 20 Feb., 1989, State terrorism in Punjab alleged; The Hindustan Times, 8 April 1988, Punjab police charged with atrocities; The Indian Express, 19 June 1988, Sidhu in illegal police custody; The Times of India, 8 May 1990, Report indicts India on Punjab; The India Express, 26 May 1990, Need for true federalism stressed; The Indian Express, October 31, 1990, PunjabStudies Circle floated; The Statesman, 6 November 1990, Documenting the history of the Khalistan campaign; The Statesman, 2 February 1990, Rally by human rights activists; The Pioneer, 8 April 1992, No one is spared & An outrage in Punjab; Mainstream, 25 April 1992, Rule of Law in Punjab.

[7] The Indian Express, 24 March 1988, Article by V. M. Tarkunde; 23 March 1988, Article by F. S. Nariman; 4 April 1988, Article by Ram Jethmalani

[8] The Tribune, 18 Feb., 1992, Army to protect voters; 20 Feb., 92, Peaceful poll, low turnout; 24 Feb., 92, Yogendra Yadav, Lowest turnout, uneven spread; 21 Feb., 92, Two thirds majority for the Congress; 25 Feb., 92, Beant to form ministry today.

[9] Mainstream, 25 April 1992, Rule of Law in Punjab

[10] The Times of India, 3 September 1997, Punjab government told to get Center’s nod before prosecution of police officers

[11] The Indian Express, 2 June 1997

[12] IE, 8 June 1997

[13] Survivor Discourse and the Narration of History, by Karen Slawner, p. 9

[14] The Times of India, 8 August 1994

[15] Mss. Eur. D. 1065/1, F. 180/70, R. 161, IOL:R

1. [16] Rex Vs Electricity Commissioners, 1924-1 KB 171, Rex vs. London County Council, `1931-2 KB 215, Province of Bombay v. Khushaldas S. Advani, 1950 SCR 621: AIR 1950 SC 222, Radeshyam Khare Vs The State of Madhya Pradesh (AIR 1959 Supreme Court 107 (V 46 19) (page 116), Dwarka Nath Vs Income tax Officer, AIR 1966 Supreme Court 81 (V 53 C 22), AIR 1950 SC 222,T. C. Basappa v. Nagappa, 1955-1 SCR 250: AIR 1954 SC 440; Irani vs. State of Madras, 1962(2) SCR 169: AIR 1961 SC 1731) and Dwarka Nath Vs Income tax Officer AIR 1966 Supreme Court 81 (V 53 C 22), Shri Anadi Mukta Sadguru Shree Muktajee Vandasjiswami Suvarna Jayanti Mahotsav Smarak Trust Vs V. R. Rudani ( AIR 1989 Supreme Court 1607), Executive Committee of Vaish Degree College, Shami Vs Lakshmi Narain (1976) 2 SCR 1006: AIR 1976 SC 888) and Deepak Kumar Biswas Vs Director of Public Instruction (1987 2 Scc 252).

[17] Mss. Eur. D. 573,84. Letter dated 8^th December 1908, IOR:L

[18] The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi, edited by Homer A. Jack, 1951, pp. 123-126

[19] Article on the Quetta earthquake written in August 1935 and reprinted in India and the World, London, 1936, p. 147

[20] The Springing Tiger, A Study of Subhas Chandra Bose, Hugh Toye, Cassell, London 1959, p. 21

[21] Edwin Montagu, A Memoir and an Account of his visits to India, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, pp. 148-150, 197-203

[22] Udyoga Parvam, Chapt. 34

"Disappearances" in Punjab

In the past authoritarian governments and dictatorships who wished to remove individuals they considered disruptive elements sometimes went to the trouble of staging mock trials, on other occasions they killed the person concerned and then stood firm or indifferent to world opinion. In the last few years similar governments have found it more convenient, and rewarding, to simply make the person disappear . In reality this means an individual is taken away by the security forces (sometimes acting independently of the government and often working undercover), and held illegally for months or years. Allegations of torture are common, to extract confessions and infor mation, and the fact that so few return from their disappeared state suggest that death is the likely outcome.

Because the abduction of the individual is never acknowledged by the security forces, and, if found, the body is so severely disfigured identity is impossible, this allows governments to deny all responsibility.

The recent rise in the number of disappearance cases has resulted in the United Nations passing a declaration which underpins the safeguards found in the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Enforced disappearance undermines the deepest values of any society committed to respect for the rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms...the systematic practice of such acts is of the nature of a crime against humanity.... Such act of enforced disappearance places the persons subjected thereto outside the protection of the law and inflicts severe suffering on them and their families. It constitutes a violation of the rules of international law guaranteeing, the rights to recognition as a person before the law, the right to liberty and security of person and the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It also violates or constitutes a grave threat to the right to life. Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, 18 December, 1992).

To be "disappeared" in India is of particular concern to human rights organisations. It is widely recognised that torture is routine in every one of India's 25 states. Every day in police cells and military barracks throughout the land pain and indignity are deliberately inflicted by paid agents of the state (Amnesty International, India: Torture, Rape & Deaths in Custody, 1992). This threat of torture is substantial for prisoners who have been legally detained and their details recorded on police charge sheets. For disappearance victims, who do not have even this meagre security, their detention is unacknowledged, the possibility of torture is greater, and the likelihood of an extra-judicial execution is almost inevitable.

The scenario for a disappearance case is familiar. Plain-clothed police officers or members of the paramilitary forces stop a man in the street ( disappearance victims are almost always young men who are suspected of being members or having support for one of India's many armed militant groups), or they may pick him up from his place of work or his home. Often the abduction is done at night, but the dis-regard for the law and the lack of political will to eradicate these practices means the security forces are equally protected if the abduction takes place in broad daylight.

The officers demand, at the point of a gun, that you enter their vehicle, which is unmarked and has blacked-out windows. They do not have an arrest warrant, and because they are not operating in uniform, there is no way of challenging them. The victim is then taken to an unmarked 'safe house'. As he is bundled into the house, manacled and blindfolded, no one makes a note of his arrival. He is like an insect that has crawled under the door, and like an insect the officers think his absence, and possibly his death, will no t be significant; they can do what they like with him.

Many cases of disappearances result in death, disfigured bodies found in canals, by railway tracks and roadsides are testimony to the cover-up of state murder that is so much a part of everyday life in some parts of India. If suspicion of the killing is successfully laid at the feet of the police, it is often denied or invalidated by one of two improbable excuses; that whilst trying to escape he was shot or that he died in an encounter. An encounter, according to the security forces, is where a person is killed during a clash between security personnel and armed militant groups. Members of the security forces are allegedly ambushed and during the crossfire the suspect is killed. It is worth noting that, according to Amnesty International (based on newspaper reports), in 1990 alone, encounters claimed the lives of 346 Sikh militants but only 25 police officers.

The interpretation of an encounter by human rights groups is that a suspected militant is either arbitrarily killed or dies as a result of severe torture and the security forces cover up the murder by claiming the person died in an encounter. The lack of an effective response from the Indian authorities has, not surprisingly, accelerated the rate of disappearances. The State authorities in India are notorious for their disregard of allegations of human rights abuses and their unwillingness to bring to justice any member of the security forces who has, in a court of law, found to be a perpetrator.

In their belief that prosecuting the illegal activities of the security forces would create a loss of morale and damage the fight against separatists movements, police, army and government officials dismiss virtually all reports as grossly exaggerated or false. Even when the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances listed a total of 169 specific allegations, the Indian government responded in only 35 cases (and then the response only clarified 18 disappearances.

Finally, the trauma of disappearances has considerable effect on the families involved. The uncertainty of ever seeing a loved one again is demoralising, a situation often encouraged by the police who wish to deter the family from maki ng any official investigation. In one such incident, that of Harjit Singh (see below), the family were told he had been killed and that the urn which was given to them contained his ashes. Two weeks later Kashmir Singh, Harjit's father, saw his son shackled to the bars of a prison cell.

The extremely high number of disappearance cases which are found in Punjab reflects the current struggle between the waning secessionist groups and the security forces who, in their enthusiasm to remove any root of opposition, are still illegally detaining hundreds of people. (However, disappearances are not exceptional to Punjab. In all areas where there are secessionist movements- Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, and the many tribal areas of the north-east- allegations of disappearance are common.)

Below are cases of people who have disappeared. If you are concerned for their plight please read the details carefully, select one or two cases, and then write to one of the addresses at the end of this document. (Suggestions for your letters can also be found here.) It is worth remembering that publicity for someone who has disappeared is, in many ways, their only chance of survival and release.

Darshan Singh (40) & Jaswinder Kaur (17) of Mohalla, Sadavarat, Ropar City, District Ropar. It is reported that Surinder Singh, husband of Jaswinder Kaur, visited Darshan Singh' s residence on 26 February, 1995, to see his in-laws. Shortly after his arrival the CIA Staff Ropar visited the house to take Surinder Singh away. He escaped, but the officers detained his wife Jaswinder Kaur, although she was not wanted in any case.

On 6 March the CIA Staff Ropar again visited Darshan Singh\rquote s residence and took him away, again without a warrant because he was not wanted in any case. Moreover, the house was confiscated by CIA Staff, without a warrant, leaving Kurmit Kaur and her five remaining children homeless. A habeas corpus petition, submitted by a human rights lawyer, Ranjan Lakenpal, on behalf of Darshan Singh and Jaswinder Kaur, was issued on 23 March, 1995, and a writ asking the state authorities to return the house to Kurmit Kaur was issued on 16 March, 1995. It is feared that whilst Darshan Singh and Jaswinder Kaur are being illegally detained they may be tortured to extract information regarding the whereabouts of Surinder Singh.

Barjinder Singh (alias Pappu, 25), son of Bahadur Singh Mangat, of village Khanjarwal Tehsil: Jagron, District Ludihana, is reported to have been abducted by the Jagron police on 5 February, 1995, at mid-night, from his in-laws' house: village Sidhwan Kalan (3km from Jagron). Bahadur Singh has petitioned the DIG of Ludihana, Ranjan Gupta, but no further news is available.

Lakhbir Singh (23) of Mohallapreet Nagar, District Ludihana, is reported to have been picked up at 02.30 on 24 January, 1995, from his home by the Sandar police (Ludihana). His wife, Charanjeet Kaur, has approached the SSP for the area, Hardipp Dhillon, however, no further news is available.

Jagbir Singh (alias Jagga, 20), son of Ajaib Singh of village Adliwal (18 km from Amritsar) is a mason by profession. On 15 January, 1995, when he was returning home from work, it is alleged that he was abducted by police cats (or Black Cats, masked undercover officers) on the Gumtala bend of the Ajunla Road at about 18.00. Jagbir Singh' s father believes that his son has been kidnapped by the police. He contacted the DIG of the area, D. R. Bhatti, and petitioned him to search all the local police stations. Unfortunately, Jagbir Singh was not found. Jagga might have been eliminated by police cats rather than tortured Ajaib Singh has said. However, it is reported that four days after his disappearance a telegram arrived from Jullundhur for Ajaib Singh, apparently from his son, saying I'm ok.

Sukhvinder Singh, of village Chhann Noorowal Thesil Ajnala, Dis. Amritsar, is reported to have been picked up by the Lopoke police (who fall under the jurisdiction of the Amritsar police) on 7 January, 1995. It is alleged that he was tortured, and his wife, Jasbir Kaur, who visited him daily to bring him food, has said that he was in a miserable condition. This included pain all over his body and blood coming from his genitals. On 1 February, 1995, Jasbir Kaur was refused permission to give food to her husband or to even see him. She feared that her husband had been killed late on 31 January. The following day the police claimed that Sukhvinder Singh had escaped by scaling the walls on February 1. However, he has not returned home and despite his wife petitioning the local authorities and police to find her husband, he has not re-appeared.

Sukhpal Singh Pali (24), son of Chhota Singh, is a resident of Sekhuiva village, District Sangrur) and a journalist for the Punjabi paper Aj di Awaz . It is reported that he was picked up by the Punjab police on 13 July, 1994, from his maternal village Churhal Kalan, Sunam district, Sangrur.

Witnesses to the abduction are his father, Gulab Singh (uncle), Jasnail Kaur (aunt) Gurdev Kaur and Sukhpal's brother Harpal Singh. They say that the police party included a driver called Pandit of the Punjab police and a Home-guard jawan, Balbir Singh. Petitions have been made by the family and the journalist's union in India, and the Supreme Court have now ordered an investigation into his disappearance.

The paper which Sukhpal Singh writes for has already been a target for harassment and intimidation, as well as illegal detention of staff members (campaigns by Index on Censorship and Article 19 have focused attention on this), and the particular case of Sukhpal Singh has featured in the country reports of Index on Censorship's bi-monthly magazine (most recently, Jan-Feb. 1995).

Sukhvinder Singh Bhatti (40), from Badbar village in District Sangrur, is a human rights lawyer. On 12 May, 1994, he was travelling home from work to his village in Badbar, Punjab when the bus he was travelling on was stopped by six plain-clothes men who searched the bus and t ook Sukhvinder Singh Bhatti away in a Murati van which had no number plates. He has not been seen since.

The involvement of the police is suspected because close to the spot where the abduction took place are two police check-points (Kooner and Badbar), and yet no officer intervened, and secondly, it is illegal for anyone, except the police, to travel through Punjab without number plates. Moreover, although the abduction was known by 13 May (it was reported in the Ajit newspaper on 14 May), the police did not register a case until 15 May, and then it was registered by the police in Dhanola which is a considerable distance from the actual incident (for full details of this case see Khalsa Human Rights report KHR 06/94).

Ajit Singh (75), is a resident of village Khuradpur, near Adampur, District Jalandhar. It is alleged that he was abducted by police, who were driving a Murati van, at 07.30 on 31 October, 1993. He has not been seen since.

Major Singh, son of Nazar Singh, was working as an assistant to a Head Granthi (priest) in Gurdwara Sant Sahib Tarn Taran when it is reported he was picked up by SHO Sampuran Singh of police station Sadar, Tarn Taran. The abduction took place outside the house of Dilbagh Singh (SP Tarn Taran) on 7 September, 1993. Witnesses to the abduction include four men who were accompanying Major Singh; Hardial Singh (son of Mohinder Singh) of village Kajanpura (District Gurdaspur), Joginder Singh (son of Bawa Singh of village Threwal (Gurdaspur), Jasbir Singh Dimpa of village Lidhar (Amritsar), and Gurinder Singh of Tarn Taran.

As Major Singh had not been produced in any court nor has he been released, Col. Surinder Sain wrote to the authorities on 19 November, 1993. According to Sukhvinder Singh, Major Singh's brother (who is also in the army posted in Kashmir), says his brother is not wanted in any case. Suhkvinder Singh has now filed a writ in the Punjab High Court to investigate the disappearance of his brother.

Jagtar Singh, son of Labh Singh, is a resident of village Sidhupur Kalan near Morinda, District Patiala/Rupar. It is alleged that Jagtar Singh was picked up by the Kharar police (District Rupar), in the presence of his elder brother and uncle (Calcutta Singh, a former village official), in a Maruti van (registration number PB -27-1284 or PB-12-1284) at 20.00 on 24 August, 1993. The arrest is reported to have been led by DSP Harminder Singh, and SHO Pritam Singh.

According to Calcutta Singh, he was unable to gain access to Jagtar and the SHO refused to register the case. Moreover, despite a deputation of 30 village officials meeting a Punjab Minister, Jagmohan Singh Kang, a lock adalat (proceedings held in private) was held on 14 September, 1993, and attended by the SSP. Calcutta Singh concluded I have come to know that Jagtar Singh, my nephew, has been killed by the police under the influence of certain persons directions.

The case of Jagtar Singh is now being looked into by the Punjab High Court. Satpal Singh, son of Jaswant Singh, is a resident of Phase IV, Mohalli, District Ropar. It is alleged that Satpal Singh was picked up by police in a white Gypsy van on 18 August, 1993 . Despite petitions by his family, he has not yet been produced in court (under Article 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure police are obliged by law to produce a suspect before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest).

Gursahib Singh, son of Lakha Singh, is a resident of village Vanika, near Chogawan, District Amritsar, is alleged to have been picked up by police in the last week of July, 1993. He has not been seen since.

Harpal Singh (40), son of Subedar Karnail Singh, of village Hardorawal, near Churian, District Gurdaspur, is alleged to have been taken from his home by the Dhilwan police on 17 July, 1993. The police were accompanied by officers from the CRPF. Harpal Singh's brother, Jaspal Singh, and a village Sarpanch (elder), Hazara Singh of Hardorawal, are reported to have seen the officers, who escorted Harpal away, working at the Dhilwan police station. However, the Dhilwan SHO did not allow access to Jaspal Singh to see if his brother was actually being detained and to this day no acknowledgeme nt of the detention has been made.

Harpal Singh's parents have sent telegrams to the State Home Secretary, the Punjab & Haryana High Court for their intervention, but Harpal has still not been produced in court (Article 167 also applies).

Tejinder Singh (33), son of Budh Singh, is a resident of District Sangrur. He was last seen on 17 July, 1993, when he was asked to accompany two police officers through the village streets to identify militants. This final abduction is the culmination of a series of police harassments on the family because of the alleged militant involvement of Tejinder's brother, Jagdeep Singh. (For full details of this case see Khalsa Human Rights report KHR 01/94.)

Attar Singh, son of Harbhajhan Singh, is a resident of village Khilchain, District Amritsar. He is also the priest at the Khilchain gurdwara (Sikh temple). In a letter written by Manjit Kaur, his wife, she states The first case they [the police], like so many other innocent people, put on my hu sband was when we as priest family were living in village of Deriwal, District Gurdaspur...My husband was tortured many times. The methods of torture is difficult to put into words.

After this we moved onto village Khilchian as village priest family. While we were living here my husband was charged under two different cases of suspicion to helping militants. One case in Jandiala police station, the second was at Bias police station. And my husband was very badly tortured under these two cases. And two mo nths after his release some officers in uniform and some in plainclothes jumped over gurdwara walls and kidnapped my husband, and after this our world was turned into complete darkness. Manjit Kaur has six children and she has now taken to begging.

It is alleged that he was picked up from the gurdwara by police on the night of 14 July, 1993 at about 22.30. Attar Singh's father has written and spoken to the District authorities and has sent telegrams to the Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh, and the Director General of Punjab Police, K.P.S. Gill, asking for the release of his son. So far no response has been made.

Balwinder Singh, who works for the panel section of the R.C.F. factory at District Kapurthala, is alleged to have been kidnapped by police on 3 July, 1993, from the main gate of the R.C.F. factory. No further information is available.

Harbhajan Singh, son of Didar Singh, and resident of Hirapur, Tehsil, District Jullundhur, is reported to have been arrested by police at 04.00 on 2 July, 1993. Witnesses, who have testified to the Punjab Human Rights Organisation (including Ravinder Kaur, Harbhajan's wife) have stated that they heard Harbhajan shout that he was being taken away by the police. Other members of the household tried to follow the blue, numberless jeep which drove off, but it got away.

According to reports, Harbhajan was not wanted in any criminal case (in previous arrests he was consistently acquitted), his detention by police has not been acknowledged, and he has not been produced in any court.

Palwinder Singh, son of the late Gurbachan Singh Gahil (whose brother Mahesh Inder Singh Gahil is a militant Khalistani activist), is a resident of village Gahil, near Bhawani Garh, District Sangrur. Palwinder Singh is alleged to have been detained by Sangrur police in the last week of June, 1993. He has not been seen since.

Jarnail Singh, a member of the Communist Party of India, was detained by the Jagraon police, District Ludhiana, in May, 1993 . He is alleged to have been picked up from his village, Rasupur, and it is alleged that he has been tortured. Despite protests lodged by his family and members of the Communist Party of India, Jarnail's present whereabouts is unknown.

Malkiat Singh Panch (35), son of Gurdit Singh, is a resident of Sangowal, District Ludhiana. It is alleged that he was picked up in a Maruti van (registration number PB 02 9473) by police cats at 14.00 on 21 April, 1993. It is believed he was then taken towards village Alamgir on the Sangrur Road. No further information is available.

Jathedar Charat Singh Rauke, a President of the Akali Dal (Sikh political party), from District Faridkot, is alleged to have been taken away by plain-clothed policemen at 13.10 on 25 March, 1993. According to witnesses in the village where the abduction took place, the police came in a Maruti car with the registration number PB 10 C 566 and a Maruti van PB 04 B 9593. The abduction took place during village elections.

According to village reports, Jathedar Charat Singh Rauke had been harassed and intimidated for a number of days before the abduction. So far, although petitions have been made to the Punjab & Haryana High Court and to District authorities, no further information has been forthcoming.

Sukhdev Singh Chamkaur (48), is a petrol-pump owner and resident at Phase IV, Mohalli, District Ropar. He is also a leading member of the Shiromani Babbar Akali Dal, a political party. On 18 March, 1993, he was told to see the SHO at Sohana police station (District Ropar) at 11.00. He was taken to the station in a Tata Mobile car and both Sukhdev Singh Chamkaur and the driver were detained. The driver was later released but Sukhdev Singh Chamkaur was kept for at least two months.

In those two months Sukhdev Singh Chamkaur telephoned his family twice and wrote one letter (the family acknowledge that the letter was in his handwriting) saying he was being held the CIA interrogation centre at Ropar. Then the communication stopped. Kamalijit Kaur, Sukhdev' s wife, has since petitioned the Punjab High Court to investigate her husband's disappearance. No further news is available.

Rajbir Singh, son of Rattan Singh, is a resident of village Rampur, Bhootuind, District Amritsar. Rajbir Singh enrolled as a constable with the Punjab police and was sent to a training college at Phillaur on 1 January, 1993. On 26 February, 1993, Rajbir' s father went to visit his son but was unable to see him. The Duty Section officer told him that Rajbir had gone absent from the course. The Principal of the college, K. S. Ghuman added that Rajbir Singh had been taken away by the Superintendent of Operations, H. S. Sekhou at 17.00 on 24 February, 1993.

Rajbir's father and the village sanpanch (elected village official), Hardev Singh, went to meet SP Sekhou at the Jagraon Police Headquarters. He told them that Rajbir had to be interrogated and this resulted in him being ill and that he will be released when he is better. Nothing has been heard of him since.

Rajbir's parents have filed a writ in the Punjab High Court but this was disposed off by the magistrate. They then took the same writ to the Indian Supreme Court. Again this was disposed off. However, the Supreme Court directed the High Court to review the matter afresh .

Harjinder Singh, son of Kashmir Singh of village Waring Suba Singh near Khadoor, District Amritsar, is alleged to have been taken from his shop and detained by police on 5 February, 1993. According to his father, Kashmir Singh, My son Harjinder Singh was picked up by the Tarn Taran Division police, whose SHO is Swaran Singh, on 5.2.93 at 9.45 morning time from my house/shop.

Harjinder' s father was told by the SHO that his son would be released in 2-4 days, but we [Kashmir and a village official] went to Tarn Taran for 8 days continuos, but my son was not released. After 8 days, Harjinder Singh was taken from Tarn Taran police station to Kang police station by the officer in charge, SHO Mohinder Singh...[When challenged] Mohinder Singh said it was not him who' s got my son, but it was Gurdev Singh, SHO of Bheronwal. He took your son from Kang police station on 14 February 1993. After talking to Gurdev Singh, he refused that he got my son and he also refused that he took my son to Bheronwal police station. Kashmir Singh has now written to many officials and even placed an advertisement in the local newspaper, however, no further news of his detention has been acknowledged by the police and no further information is available.

Gurdeep Singh, who works at the sugar mill at Dhariwal and is a resident of village Pachnawat, near Dhariwal, District Gurdaspur, was produced before the Qadian police by the village panchayat (elected elder) in January, 1993. Other members of the village committee ar e reported to have seen Gurdeep Singh in police custody for at least a week after his detention for questioning. The Qadian police claim that Gurdeep Singh was released immediately after interrogation. However, to this day, Gurdeep Singh has not returned home. Family and friends believe he has died through excessive torture and that his body has been disposed.

Bikkar Singh, son of Surjit Singh, is alleged to have been picked up by plain-clothed policemen at 18.00 on 29 December, 1992. Bikkar Singh's brother, Avtar Singh of village Sarhali Kalan near Tarn Taran, District Amritsar, and his mother, Bibi Gurmej Kaur, have petitioned for his release. No further information is available.

Mela Singh, an analyst with th e Co-operative Societies and a resident of Khalsa Avenue, District Amritsar, is alleged to have been picked up by plain-clothed policemen from near the railway workshop, Putlighar, District Amritsar on 14 December, 1992. Mela's wife, Bibi Kuljinder Kaur, has contacted police officials asking them to make a FIR with regards her husband's alleged kidnapping. So far the FIR has not been lodged, leading to suspicions that the police may have been involved in the abduction and are trying to cover-up the incident. Similarly, writs of habeas corpus (which demand that an individual has to be produced in court) have been met with no response.

Wassan Singh, an activist for the Akali Dal, is alleged to have been abducted by two police officers on 7 November, 1992. It is reported that Wassan Singh, a resident of Nawan Pind Hundal, District Gurdaspur, has been tortured by the Amritsar police where it is belie ved he is being illegally detained. The police of Gurdaspur deny all knowledge of Wassan\rquote s detention and have made no attempts to obtain information from the Amritsar police about the allegations of torture and illegal detention.

Parminder Singh, son of Hardeep Singh Dhillon, was arrested by the Punjab police on 9 October, 1992, as he travelled from his native village Jhabal, District Amritsar, to Baba Budha Secondary School in Bir Sahib, Amritsar, where he is a science master. Parminder' s father, a senior assistant at the Guru Nanak Dev University, has already written to the District authorities and has sent telegrams to the Chief Justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, and to Beant Singh, the State's Chief \par Minister, but has not received any reply and his son's whereabouts is still unknown.

Buta Singh Bhatti, President of the Bharti Ghat Ginti and Dalit Mukti Front, is a resident of village Leelan, Jagraon, District Ludhiana. It is alleged that he was abducted by the Punjab police in an unmarked Maruti car on the morning of 24 September, 1992. Reports state he was taken to a secret detention centre.

Hardial Singh Karseva Wala is a Kar Sewa Saint (a Sikh holy man who builds gurdwaras- Sikh temples). It is reported he was abducted by the SHO at Sarhali whilst at the Gurusar Mehraj gurdwara near Ram Pura Phul, District Batinda, at 10.30 on 14 September, 1992. He has not been see n since.

Mukhtiar Singh, son of Harbhajhan Singh, is a resident of village Kalan Bala, near Dhariwal, District Gurdaspur. Mukhtiar Singh is a police constable. It is reported that whilst on duty at a police check-point, Mukhtiar Singh and Gurmeet Kaur were picked up by the Jalandhar police on 30 August, 1992. Gurmeet Kaur was released after a few days, following petitions raised by the families of both people, however, Mukhtiar Singh is still being detained.

Sukhmander Singh, son of Major Singh Dallah (of village Dallah, District Ludhiana), is a soldier serving with the Indian army. It is alleged that whilst returning to his village for a holiday, he was abducted near the village Akkhara by police cats on 19 July, 1992. His family say that he had Rs 25,000 on him. No further information is available.

Jasbir Singh, son of Bibi Balwant Kaur, is a resident of village Kangniwal, District Jalandhar. It is alleged that he was abducted by the Jalandhar police from his village at 09.00 on 25 June, 1992. His mother has petitioned the Chief Justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court and Beant Singh, so far no response has been forthcoming. (See also Amnesty International, An Unnatural Fate : Disappearances and Impunity in the Indian States of Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab1993, A.I. Index ASA 20/42/93, p.59).

Mohinder Singh, son of Avtar Singh, is an agricultural inspector. He is a resident of village Jeon Singh Wala, near Sardulgarh, District Bathinda. It is alleged that he was abducted by four policemen in plain clothes and driven away in an unmarked vehicle on 21 June, 1 992. He has not been seen since.

Mohinder's wife, Bibi Bhajhan Kaur, has petitioned District officials, the SP Bathinda and Beant Singh. No further information is known.

Param Satinderjit Singh, son of Sawinder Singh (a lecturer at a State Secondary School), of village Kalanour, District Gurdaspur, is alleged to have been taken away by the Punjab police on 18 May, 1992. It is reported that he was abducted between 16.00-18.00 from Lawrence Road, Amritsar and taken away in a jeep. He has not been seen since.

Param Satinderjit Singh is a student at the Guru Nanak Dev (GND) University in Amritsar. His father has already petitioned the Chief Justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, K.P.S. Gill, and has been interviewed by a research team from Human Rights Watch/Asia (see report, Dead Silence: The Legacy of Human Rights Abuses in Punjab, May, 1994, p.51-52.

Following the abduction, Dr. Atamjit Singh, the dean of student welfare at GND went to the police but was told Param was not in custody. Further protests by students and lecturers resulted in a meeting with the SSP Amritsar, Hardeep Singh Dhillon, who told them that Param had not been detained by his officers but by police belonging to another district who were operating without permission. They were also told, You cannot always talk in legal terms; the law only exists in the books. There is a 99% chance that the boy has been killed.

On September 23, 1993, another university delegation met with A.S. Chatha, the Chief Secretary. He told them that Param was still in custody, that he is suspected of participating in a bombing incident but that the police had not registered a case against him because they could not find any witnesses. Mr. Chatha also promised the delegation that if Param is charged under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act, they could then see him. As yet no charge has been made, no access to Param been permitted and the police have provided no further information.

Harjit Singh was abducted by police on 29 April, 1992, whilst he was standing at a bus stop. Later the police claimed Harjit Singh was captured on 11 May and then killed in an attack by Sikh militants, he was actually seen alive in police custody on two occasions by his father. He was last seen alive on 15 October, 1992, when he was being held in a CIA building in Mal Mundi (for full details of this case see Amnesty International, An Unnatural Fate pp. 29-31).

Karam Singh, a resident of village Bhattian, District Amritsar, has not been seen since 1991. His family believe he has been illegally detained, tortured and killed. His brother, S. Bachittar Singh, his brother's wife, Jasbir Kaur, his brother-in-law, Amrik Singh, and his children have all been repeatedly detained and allegedly tortured by the Goindwal police. Karam Singh's family are in constant fear of further abuses.

- all State and District authorities should maintain a central, up to date and accurate register of all detainees in the State, clearly indicating the place of detention;

- all units of the security forces should be obliged to notify the State and District authorities as soon as an arrest is made, and as detailed an account of the arrest should be recorded (including name, age and address of detainee, place of arrest, place and period of detention, name of arresting officer and under whom the detainee is responsible);

- members of the judiciary, relatives of the detainee and their legal representatives as well as relevant bodies and other interested parties should have immediate access to all information being kept on the detainee;

- relatives should be immediately notified of the arrest and place of detention;

- the authorities should adopt an active policy to prevent disappearances, such as:

- taking immediate and effective steps to ensure that all those against whom there is evidence that they have participated in or sanctioned disappearances should be promptly brought to justice, and;

- the government should strengthen legal safeguards to prevent disappearances and abide by its international obligations under the human right standards which it has signed and ratified (most notably the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights and India's own Constitution, all three guarantee the right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention).

The partition of British India that created the independent nations of Pakistan and India in 1947 drew a line through Punjab. When the resultant civil conflicts and migrations ended, the Sikhs were concentrated in east Punjab. In 1953, India' s central government appointed a commission which redrew the boundaries of all states, with the exception o f Punjab, along linguistic lines. In response, Sikh leaders mobilised for a Punjabi language-majority state. Fearing that a Punjabi state might lead to a separatist Sikh movement, the central government opposed the demand. In response, Sikh politicians launched a civil disobedience campaign that led to the arrest of thousands by the end of 1955. Continuing civil disobedience campaigns precipitated the arrest of over 50,000 Sikhs between 1960 and 1961.

Between 1981 and the army assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June, 1984, there were protracted negotiations between the government and the Sikh Akali Dal leadership. After 1982, the Akali Dal demanded more autonomy for the state, the promised transfer of the capital city Chandigarh and other Punjabi- speaking areas to Punjab, a Sikh code of personal law, quotas for Sikhs in the military, and the deletion of language in the Indian constitution which brackets Sikhs with Hindus.

On 1 May, 1982 the government of India broke off talks with the Akali Dal and banned several Sikh organisations. Members of these banned groups retreated to the Golden Temple complex, becoming an armed headquarters for sections of the independence movement. Talks between the government and the Akali Dal resumed in late 1982 but en ded in stalemate, and the failure of the civil disobedience campaigns to achieve a breakthrough prompted some politicians to align with the militants and justify the resort to violence. Attacks on policemen and civilians escalated. President's Rule, direct rule from Delhi, was imposed on Punjab on 6 October, 1983, after a bus was ambushed and six Hindu passengers murdered.

Increasingly, Sikh men were reported to have been executed in staged encounters with security forces, setting in place the cycle of violence. The army led an assault on the Golden Temple on 4 June, 1984, and because foreign journalists were deported and domestic journalists were prohibited from reporting it is difficult to asses how the confrontation was conducted.

On 31 October, 19 84, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards. In the days that followed, anti-Sikh rioting paralysed New Delhi, ultimately claiming at least 3,000 lives. Sikh men were beaten, stabbed, and doused with kerosene and burned to death by mobs. In some neighbourhoods, children were also killed, and women were raped. At least 50,000 people were displaced, and tens of thousands of Sikh homes and businesses were burned to the ground.

Since then, the negotiations for peace have been constantly undermined by the lack of continuity in India's government, the lack of a political will for a solution, and because of the increasing number of atrocities committed by both Sikh militants and security personnel.