I. Summary

I did everything in the pursuit of truth and justice. I even begged. But all this failed me. What else could I have done?...There is a Punjabi saying that after 12 years, even a pile of manure gets to be heard. But for me, after 12 years, nobody is listening-this must mean that I am worth even less than manure.

-Mohinder Singh, father of extrajudicial execution victim Jugraj Singh

Despite a strong democracy and a vibrant civil society, impunity for human rights abuses is thriving in India. Particularly in counterinsurgency operations, Indian security forces commit human rights abuses with the knowledge that there is little chance of being held accountable. Human Rights Watch documented this most recently in its September 2006 report, "Everyone Lives in Fear": Patterns of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir, which showed a vicious cycle of abuse and impunity that has fueled the conflict.

The impunity gap in India is nowhere more evident than in Punjab. Over a decade has passed since the government defeated a separatist Sikh rebellion. Tens of thousands of people died during this period, which stretched from early 1980s through the mid-1990s. Sikh militants were responsible for serious human rights abuses including the massacre of civilians, attacks upon Hindu minorities in the state, indiscriminate bomb attacks in crowded places, and the assassination of a number of political leaders. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in 1984. The Sikh insurgency paralyzed the economy and led to widespread extortion and land grabs.

At the same time, from 1984 to 1995 the Indian government ordered counterinsurgency operations that led to the arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial execution, and enforced disappearance of thousands of Sikhs. Police abducted young Sikh men on suspicion that they were involved in the militancy, often in the presence of witnesses, yet later denied having them in custody. Most of the victims of such enforced disappearances are believed to have been killed. To hide the evidence of their crimes, security forces secretly disposed of the bodies, usually by cremating them. When the government was questioned about "disappeared" youth in Punjab, it often claimed that they had gone abroad to Western countries.

Special counterinsurgency laws, and a system of rewards and incentives for police to capture and kill militants, led to an increase in "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions of civilians and militants alike. In 1994, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights described the government's operations as "the most extreme example of a policy in which the end appeared to justify any and all means, including torture and murder."

The Punjab mass cremations case a primary subject of this report-has its roots in investigations by human rights activists Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon conducted in 1994 and early 1995, when they used government crematoria records to expose over 6,000 secret cremations by the police in just one of then 13 districts in Punjab. Based on the information gathered by them, the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP) moved the Supreme Court in April 1995 to demand a comprehensive inquiry into extrajudicial executions ending in secret cremations.

Meanwhile, after repeatedly threatening him, several officials of the Punjab police arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured, and killed Jaswant Singh Khalra in October 1995. Khalra's murder, and the eventual conviction of his killers 10 years later, made the reality of thousands of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions impossible to deny. The Indian government even admitted that it illegally cremated 2,097 individuals in Amritsar. Alarmingly, officials are yet to be held accountable for these thousands of custodial deaths.

After hearing the CIIP petition, the Supreme Court, in 1996, ordered India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to address all issues that arose from the mass cremations and granted the Commission extraordinary powers to complete this task. In over 10 years of proceedings, however, the NHRC has failed to properly address civil liability and accountability issues by refusing to independently investigate a single abuse or allow a single victim family to testify. Instead, the Commission has based its findings on information provided by the Punjab police, the perpetrators of the cremations. Furthermore, the Commission has limited its inquiry to 2,097 cremations in three crematoria in one district of Punjab and has refused to consider mass cremations, extrajudicial executions, and "disappearances" throughout the rest of the state, despite evidence that these crimes were perpetrated.

In an October 9, 2006 order, which effectively closed all of the major issues in the Punjab mass cremations case, the NHRC appointed a commissioner of inquiry in Amritsar, retired High Court judge K.S. Bhalla, to identify the remaining cremation victims from those acknowledged by the government, if possible, within eight months. Though the Bhalla Commission received a limited mandate, it could have devised an independent methodology for identifying victims, conducted its own investigations, and allowed for more evidence from victim families. Instead, it continued the NHRC practice of relying on the Punjab police for identifications or confirmations of victims of illegal cremations.

When the Supreme Court designated the NHRC as its body to investigate the human rights violations raised by the Punjab mass cremations case, it also entrusted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the culpability of police officials. Over 10 years later, the petitioners have no information on whether there have been any prosecutions. In a submission before the NHRC in 1999, the CBI stated that it had registered 30 regular cases for investigation "out of which 12 cases have been finalised and18 cases are pending investigation." The number of cases registered for investigation by the CBI demonstrates the limits of the CBI inquiry, since it apparently found it necessary to register only 30 cases corresponding to 2,097 admitted illegal cremations. It also ignored the remaining vast majority of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions that occurred throughout Punjab.

Even the pursuit for justice for the abduction, torture, and murder of human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra illustrates many of the challenges facing family members of victims in Punjab who wish to pursue legal remedies. The police threatened and illegally detained witnesses and filed false cases against some of them. It took 10 years before a judge finally convicted six Punjab police officers for their roles in the abduction and murder of Khalra. Further, despite eyewitness testimony implicating then Director General of Police (DGP) KPS Gill in Khalra's illegal detention and murder, the CBI has yet to bring charges against him.

Worryingly, the Indian government cites the counterinsurgency operations in Punjab as a model for handling security crises and has replicated it to tackle law and order problems and armed conflicts in other parts of India. Security forces, provided de facto impunity by the state and protected by immunity laws, have continued to commit serious human rights abuses. Indian police often torture security detainees. Human rights groups have demanded proper investigations because of persistent and credible allegations that security forces also continue to construct faked encounters to kill suspects and ordinary persons, in the hope of receiving rewards and promotions.

Even when investigations identify those responsible for such grave human rights abuses, the government seldom publicly prosecutes or punishes the perpetrators. Although many government officials privately agree that the scale of human rights violations has increased, they resist any accountability efforts because they claim it would affect the morale of security forces operating in difficult circumstances. The Indian government has refused to acknowledge the systemic nature of the problem of impunity, and has done little to address the underlying problems that have led to abuse.

India must act to put an end to the institutional defects that foster impunity if it is serious about effective conflict resolution and lasting peace. In this report we focus on select cases in Punjab to illustrate these institutional defects. The past decade of proceedings concerning state crimes in Punjab have represented a series of refusals to acknowledge the widespread and systematic human rights violations, and the failure to apply international and Indian standards to provide reparations for these abuses. The cases we investigated demonstrate the failure of various government agencies including the police, the courts, the CBI, and the NHRC, to provide justice.

For instance, the Indian government points to its National Human Rights Commission as proof of its commitment to the protection of human rights. As the Punjab mass cremations case shows, the National Human Rights Commission chose to limit the mandate it received from the Supreme Court and refused to provide redress according to Indian and international law. Yet, this case represents the best opportunity to challenge institutionalized impunity in India.Since this matter is still under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which has extraordinary powers to remedy human rights violations, there is an opportunity to provide justice in this case and set a positive precedent for the redress of state abuses.

Victims and their families still demand redress from the Indian state, but they face severe challenges. These include prolonged trials, biased prosecutors, an unresponsive judiciary, police intimidation and harassment of witnesses-many of whom eventually turn hostile-and the failure to charge senior police officers despite evidence of their role in the abuses. None of the government officials who bear substantial responsibility for these atrocities have been brought to justice. Instead, the Indian government's strategy appears to be to deny its crimes and wait out the demands for accountability.

Impunity for these atrocities exists despite the fact that a series of elections have been held in Punjab since 1992, and almost all of the primary political parties have taken turns in power. Political leaders have consistently portrayed abuses as aberrations and perpetrators as lone, rogue actors, despite evidence that senior police and civilian leaders knew about and may even have authorized the abuses. Further, each government has promoted officers accused of gross human rights violations during the counterinsurgency.

The Indian government consistently denies in its submissions to the United Nations special procedures that its security forces committed human rights abuses during the Punjab counterinsurgency. Officials have instead sometimes equated human rights groups with terrorists. The leader of Punjab's counterinsurgency efforts, KPS Gill, has led the attack against the pursuit of justice, describing legal petitions as a weapon of terrorism-a "litigation gun" that has served as an "instrument of primary attack."

Such an aggressive position from the government bodes ill for future progress on impunity, not just in Punjab, but in other parts of India, where human rights defenders are coming under similar criticism, often accused of being the "enemy" if they speak against state forces.

Unless Indian officials find the political will to demand investigations, prosecutions, punishment, and reparations, human rights violations will continue. There is ample opportunity to take action in Punjab. Security has been restored. Further, strong documentation of violations has emerged and families continue to pursue accountability efforts. Although the Indian government claims that it took action against dozens of security officers for abuses in Punjab, many of these actions were limited to transfers or demotions. Criminal convictions, especially of senior officers implicated in abuse, have been rare. Further, the government has not addressed the thousands of abuses perpetrated.

India must begin to develop effective mechanisms to redress mass state crimes and the specific institutional defects that promote impunity. As the mass cremations case and other cases come before the Supreme Court, the court has the opportunity and responsibility to create new remedies to redress these violations. An effective remedy requires the state to take the necessary investigative, judicial, and reparatory steps to redress the violations. Reparations should include restitution, rehabilitation, compensation, and satisfaction and guarantees of non-recurrence. To redress the mass state crimes in Punjab, India will need to conduct comprehensive investigations, prosecute the most responsible officials in a timely manner, and provide and implement reparations for victims and their families.

We provide a remedial framework in this report to ensure an effective remedy for all persons whose rights were violated in Punjab during the counterinsurgency. We recommend a commission of inquiry that will investigate the entire scale and scope of the crimes, outline institutional responsibility, and identify those who planned and ordered the abuses; a special prosecutor's office with fast track courts that will speedily and impartially investigate and prosecute systems crimes, including command structures and disciplinary practices; and a comprehensive reparations program, based on the full spectrum of rights violations. When the Punjab mass cremations case returns to the Supreme Court, the Court could implement such mechanisms in forging its remedy.

The Indian government should not believe that these crimes will fade into history. International law recognizes enforced disappearance as a crime for which any statute of limitations must take into account the continuous nature of the offense.Moreover, the state is under a continuing legal obligation to provide victims of rights violations and their families an effective remedy and reparations. The reputation of the Indian state as a gross human rights violator will persist until it fulfills these obligations.

Key recommendations

The Indian government must publicly announce its opposition to human rights violations by making clear that torture, custodial killings, faked armed-encounter killings, and "disappearances" will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

The government must demonstrate its opposition to such violations by holding criminally responsible officials who order, tolerate, or commit such practices. A good beginning will be to prosecute those found responsible for such abuses in Punjab, in particular the key architects of the crimes.

The government should appoint a national commission to allow an impartial and independent investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment and investigate the fate of all those who were "disappeared" or killed by state security forces in Punjab. All victims and their families should be able to register allegations of human rights abuses. Unlike numerous commissions already established to inquire into allegations of state-sponsored crimes, this one should be strictly time bound and able to access information from government records and victim families.

All legal provisions providing effective immunity to members of the police and paramilitary forces should be repealed so that perpetrators of human rights violations can be brought to justice.

The Indian government should create a Special Prosecutor's Office and fast track courts to impartially investigate "system crimes" and prosecute the most responsible perpetrators.

The Indian government should provide victims and their beneficiaries with reparations through a prompt and effective procedure that redresses the entire scope of violations.

India is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council and thus bound to cooperate with its mechanisms. The Indian government should issue standing invitations to relevant United Nations thematic human rights rapporteurs or working groups to investigate the allegations of human rights abuses in Punjab.

The international community must condemn violations of human rights by Indian security forces and make future military aid and sales and all programs of military cooperation with India conditional to India taking significant steps to end impunity for its security forces.

II. Methodology

This report is based on a series of trips by Ensaaf researchers to Punjab, India, between January 2007 and April 2007, during which time they attended the hearings of the Bhalla Commission of Inquiry and conducted interviews with 45 families of victims of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions. During this time, Ensaaf also interviewed human rights defenders and journalists and researched key legal cases. Additional research was conducted by telephone, email, and meetings with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), activists, and lawyers outside of India. Throughout 2006, Ensaaf collected and researched thousands of legal records, news articles, and other documents. All efforts have been made to provide current information on unresolved and ongoing cases documented in this reportas of September 2007. In certain cases, in order protect victims and others who fear reprisal by the Indian government for speaking about human rights abuses, identifying information has been withheld.

III. Background

Thousands of mothers await their sons even though some may know that that the oppressor has not spared their sons' lives on this earth. A mother's heart is such that even if she sees her son's dead body, she does not accept that her son has left her. And those mothers who have not even seen their children's dead bodies, they were asking us: at least find out, is our son alive or not? [1]

-Jaswant Singh Khalra, human rights activist, killed October 1995

The religious minority community of Sikhs represents two percent of India's population, and 60 percent of the population in the northern Indian state of Punjab.[2]

The 1980s in Punjab witnessed a decade-long insurgency by Sikh militants, fueled by failed attempts at procuring greater autonomy. Militants were responsible for numerous human rights abuses during the violent separatist struggle for an independent Khalistan, including the killings of Hindu and Sikh civilians, assassinations of political leaders, and the indiscriminate use of bombs leading to a large number of civilian deaths in Punjab and other parts of India. Under the cover of militancy, criminals began to coerce businessmen and landowners, demanding protection money. The Indian government responded with force, leading to numerous allegations of human rights violations.

The Sikh militant movement in Punjab escalated after the Indian Army raided the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex in Amritsar, Punjab-the center of Sikh religious and political life-on June 4, 1984, along with 41 other gurdwaras in Punjab. Scores of militants had retreated into the Harmandir Sahib complex.[7]

During the exchange of firing with the ensconced militants after troops entered the complex, and the subsequent executions by the Army, thousands were believed to have been killed, the majority of them Sikh pilgrims. The indiscriminate use of force led to heavy damages to the Harmandir Sahib complex which caused tremendous outrage among Sikhs, many of whom did not support the militant campaign for a separate Khalistan.[9] On October 31, 1984, two Sikh members of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's security staff assassinated her in Delhi. After the assassination, senior politicians and police officers orchestrated pogroms of Sikhs in various cities across India, killing at least 2,733 Sikhs in Delhi alone.[10] Gangs of assailants burned Sikhs alive, raped women, and destroyed their gurdwaras and properties. The violence continued unabated for four days. None of the senior politicians or police officers identified by victims and eyewitnesses as organizing or perpetrating the massacres were held criminally responsible.[11] On September 28, 2007, 23 years after the pogroms, the CBI said it was closings its case against some Congress politicians because it was unable to find witnesses; most were dead or had refused to testify.[12] In August 2005, the Justice G.T. Nanavati Commission had found that no proper investigation was done by the police even in cases registered by them.

From May 11, 1987 to February 25, 1992, the Indian government dismissed the elected government in Punjab and imposed President's Rule, that is, direct governance by the central government.[14] In addition, India's Parliament enacted counterinsurgency legislation that facilitated human rights violations and shielded security forces from accountability for these violations. The National Security Act was amended to allow for detention without trial for up to two years in Punjab for acts prejudicial to the security or defense of India.[15] The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act of 1987 (TADA), provided the police with powers of search, seizure, and arrest. Under Section 15, a confession allegedly voluntarily made before a police officer, not lower in rank than a superintendent of police, was admissible in court against an accused (or co-accused, abettor or conspirator) for an offense under this Act. There were widespread allegations that police routinely used torture to obtain confessions from detainees and/or planted evidence as a means of detaining them under TADA. The Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act of 1984 provided for special in-camera courts in "terrorist affected" areas that could conceal the identity of witnesses. In addition, a defendant charged with "waging war" had the burden of proving his innocence.[18] The Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act of 1983 empowered security forces to search premises and arrest people without warrant. Section 4 of the Special Powers Act allowed security forces to shoot to kill suspected terrorists, and Section 7 extended prosecutorial immunity to any action taken pursuant to the Act.[19] TADA, too, provided immunity from prosecutions for any acts in "good faith done or purported to be done in pursuance of this Act."

Indian security forces arbitrarily detained, tortured, executed, and "disappeared" tens of thousands of Sikhs in counterinsurgency operations.[21] In the early 1990s, Director General of Police (DGP) KPS Gill expanded upon a system of rewards and incentives for police to capture and kill militants, leading to an increase in "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions of civilians and militants alike.[22] The United States government described the Punjab police practice of faked encounter killings in 1993:

In the typical scenario, police take into custody a suspected militant or militant supporter without filing an arrest report. If the detainee dies during interrogation or is executed, officials deny he was ever in custody and claim he died during an armed encounter with police or security forces. Alternatively, police may claim to have been ambushed by militants while escorting a suspect. Although the detainee invariably dies in "crossfire," police casualties in these "incidents" are rare. [23]

In the majority of cases, the police abducted the victims of extrajudicial executions or "disappearances" in the presence of witnesses, often family members.[24] Family members of the victims further experienced multiple forms of abuse. A recent study conducted by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Bellevue/NYU Medical Center Program for Survivors of Torture revealed that family members of the "disappeared" were also tortured in over half of the cases they investigated.[25]

Security forces further persecuted their victims through extortion and destruction of property, such as crops, livestock, and buildings. They obstructed justice by intimidating witnesses and lawyers, detaining and torturing family members, and failing to comply with court orders to release detainees.[26] In the 1994 report Dead Silence: Legacy of Abuses in Punjab, Human Rights Watch/Asia and PHR described the government counter-insurgency operations as "the most extreme example of a policy in which the end appeared to justify any and all means, including torture and murder."[27] Hundreds of perpetrators have escaped accountability,including all of the major architects of these crimes.[28]

In early 1995, human rights activists Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon, of the Akali Dal political party, used government crematoria records to expose over 6,000 secret cremations by the police in just one of then 13 districts in Punjab. They focused their investigations on illegal cremations, putting aside other possible ends of the victims' bodies, such as dismemberment or dumping in canals. Jaswant Singh Khalra described how the hesitation of family members to report "disappearances" led him and Dhillon to the cremation grounds: "[C]ountless mothers, countless sisters weren't ready to say that [their loved one was "disappeared"]. They said, "[I]f you take this issue further, and our son is still alive, they [the police] will kill him."[29] Thus, Khalra and Dhillon went to the cremation grounds:

We went and asked the employees: 'During this time, how many dead bodies did the police give you?' Some said we burned eight to 10 everyday.Some said there was no way to keep account; sometimes a truck full of bodies came, and sometimes two to four dead bodies came [T]hey told us we could get the account from one place: 'The police gave us the dead bodies, and the municipal committee gave us the firewood.' [30]

As Khalra began collecting information from the municipal records which gave the number of dead bodies brought by specific police officers and the amount of firewood purchased to burn the bodies, he also began to receive threats from the security forces. Eventually, the Punjab police abducted Jaswant Singh Khalra on September 6, 1995, secretly detained and tortured him for almost two months, and murdered him in late October 1995.[31] His body was dumped in a canal. Six police officers were convicted of charges relating to his murder and abduction in November 2005, although a petition calling for charges against former DGP Gill remains pending.[32]

The end to counterinsurgency operations has brought an end to systematic extrajudicial killings and "disappearances" in Punjab. However, the vast majority of these "disappearances" remain unresolved, and major perpetrators of the abuses from 1984 to 1995 have received promotions and currently occupy senior positions in the Punjab police. Their ongoing tenure and the impunity granted to almost all perpetrators have created a system that continues to facilitate custodial abuses, in particular illegal detention and torture.[33]

The Indian government, the state government of Punjab, and Punjab police have all denied the extent of systematic "disappearances," extrajudicial executions, and torture that occurred in Punjab during the counterinsurgency, at most admitting to a few errant abuses. Some officials privately justified the violations as necessary to combat the insurgency.

For instance, in response to reports by the United Nations (UN), the Indian Government has denied abuses committed during the counterinsurgency. At the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Commission in February 1994, Dr. Manmohan Singh, then India's finance minister, downplayed widespread human rights abuses in India as "aberrations" that had occurred in confronting terrorism.[34] In response to 95 communications sent by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions in 1992, the Indian government replied that the police acted within their code of conduct, and that every allegation of human rights abuse was "scrupulously investigated and most of them were found inaccurate, highly exaggerated or deliberately false."[35] In response to allegations of "disappearances" submitted by the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in 1994, the Indian government failed to acknowledge the systematic abuses and the judicial impunity protecting police perpetrators. The Working Group summarized the government's response:

The Government denied the allegations that there may be several thousand cases of disappearances in Punjab. Scrupulous care had been taken to protect the rights of the individual under due process of law. Habeas corpus was available to all under the Indian judicial system in all circumstances. Wherever there was any suspicion of police excesses, action was taken. In Punjab, action had been taken against 210 police personnel. All cases of alleged disappearance which were brought to the attention of police authorities were investigated. [36]

Human rights groups, however, have consistently reported on the failure of the judicial system to address human rights abuses in Punjab.[37]

During the counterinsurgency in Punjab, the Indian government also rejected reports by international human rights organizations on widespread abuses. In a letter issued to Amnesty International that denied the group permission to visit Punjab, the Indian Embassy stated: "The only turmoil in Punjab are the acts of violence by terrorists who have been indiscriminate in their butchery of innocents of all communities." The letter further stressed India's sovereignty and its antipathy to foreign interference in its domestic affairs.[38] In response to the 1991 Asia Watch report Punjab in Crisis, the Indian government denied the abuses, stating that it did not tolerate any violations of the law.[39]

Punjab government institutions have equated human rights activists with terrorists and consistently used the insurgency to justify their actions. In the Punjab mass cremations case discussed below, the response of the Punjab police and government of Punjab has been to portray demands for a full accounting of abuses as negating the contributions of police in fighting insurgency.[40] Submissions by the state of Punjab have stressed the number of police killed in the insurgency.[41] In a 2002 application before the National Human Rights Commission, the state of Punjab denied the abuses but also wrote:

The time frame under consideration of this Hon'ble Commission was an extraordinary time. It was necessary to take all steps to ensure that terrorists do not become role models for the impressionable youth and that they are not glorified and eulogized.An added area of concern for the State was to ensure that attempts of the invisible hand to ignite communal tensions were promptly contained. [42]

The Punjab police have also associated human rights activists with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] such as in this deposition which claimed:

[C]ertain non-governmental organizations working in the area of preservation, promotion and sensitisation of the public to human rights issues, have undertaken a sustained and well financed campaign of disinformation to malign the image of the Punjab Police so that the low intensity war of terrorism conceived, designed and fuelled by ISI continues unabated. [43]

In requesting the Supreme Court to rule in their favor, the Punjab police have attempted to gain sympathy by referencing "the barrage of writ petitions" they are facing:

It is respectfully submitted that a large number of writ petitions are being filed on bogus charges. Human rights activists are coaxing people and even threatening them to file writ petitions by incorporating concocted facts. Thus the police is unable to rivet its attention against the terrorists in full measure. [44]

KPS Gill, director general of police in Punjab at the height of the abuses, has led the campaign against police accountability. His writings and speeches have consistently referred to human rights activists as terrorists or agents of Pakistan's ISI. He has further equated terrorism with the filing of writ petitions. In "The Litigation Weapon Against the Police and the State," he wrote:

Far more insidiously, however, at some time during the course of the terrorist movement, the weapon of the writ petition was discovered and deployed. A period followed thereafter, when both the Kalashnikov and the writ petition were used in tandem. But elements unhappy with the return of peace in the State advanced the litigation gun from its status of a support weapon to an instrument of primary attack. By now, this weapon had been upgraded from an inefficient single-shot gun to an automatic rapid-fire implementation of war. The distortion and manipulation of the legal process and the coordinated orchestration of the media that is being resorted to by an utterly compromised 'human rights' lobby are an integral part of a propaganda war aimed against peace and stability. [45]

Gill has consistently denied the systematic aspect of the abuses, at most admitting to aberrations and claiming that he has regularly disciplined his subordinates.[46] Gill discusses these writ petitions as a threat to national security and a strategy of "front organisations of the defeated terrorist movement."[47] He further blamed the alleged suicide of senior police officer Ajit Singh Sandhu-responsible for Khalra's abduction, torture and murder-on human rights activists:

Had this [writ petition] assault no motive other than justice, one would merely say, 'Let the law take its own course.' But when it claimed its first life, that of SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu, I was shaken by the success of those who had failed so abjectly against us in open conflict. The war they lost in the field had been resumed with vigour as a propaganda war. Through this exaggerated barrage of petitions, these forces are pursuing a dual strategy to immobilize and demoralize the police and to create among the people enjoying the fruits of a hard-won peace a sense of oppression that the forces can exploit to their perfidious ends. [48]

In 1997, after SSP Sandhu's suicide, Gill wrote a letter to Prime Minister IK Gujral, in which he described the legal cases proceeding against SSP Sandhu and other policemen as "an unprecedented and unprincipled inquisition," "a sustained and vicious campaign of calumny, of institutional hostility and State indifference," and public interest litigation as "the most convenient strategy for vendetta."[49]

This refusal to acknowledge crimes committed by security forces, and in fact, choosing instead to condemn the messenger, has only added to the culture of impunity in India, where extrajudicial means to end insurgencies or punish alleged terrorists have claimed numerous lives, many of them innocent.

IV. International and Domestic Legal Standards and Norms

We simply want justice and we want those people to be punished

-Gurcharan Singh, father of victim

An enforced disappearance occurs when officials affiliated with the government arrest, detain, or abduct an individual, and then refuse to acknowledge the deprivation of the individual's liberty or disclose his fate or whereabouts.[50] The practices of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions violate several human rights, including the right to life, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to a fair and public trial, as well as the prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment. An enforced disappearance is a continuing crime until the "disappearance" is resolved.

"Impunity" means the impossibility, in law or in fact, of holding perpetrators accountable.[51] De facto impunity takes place when the state fails to prosecute human rights abusers for lack of capacity or political will. De jure impunity occurs when laws or regulations providing immunity or amnesty make it difficult or impossible to prosecute a perpetrator for human rights abuses. Both forms of impunity prevail in India and effectively shield perpetrators from accountability, leading to more human rights violations and undermining faith in the government and security forces.[52]

The right to an effective remedy

To combat impunity, international law, including treaties to which India is party,guarantee the right to an effective remedy for victims of gross human rights violations, including "disappearances," extrajudicial executions, and torture.[53]A victim's right to an effective remedy obligates the state to take the necessary investigative, judicial, and reparatory steps to redress the violation and address the victim's rights to knowledge, justice, and reparations.[54]The state is under a continuing obligation to provide an effective remedy; there is no time limit on legal action and the right cannot be compromised even during a state of emergency.[55]

International human rights standards provide that states investigate allegations of human rights violations with a focus on identifying perpetrators and holding them to account.[56] Every victim is entitled to information on the particular circumstances and underlying causes leading to his victimization.[57] The Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions call upon states to remove officials implicated in these crimes from direct or indirect power over the complainants and witnesses, as well as those conducting the investigation.[58] In cases of enforced disappearance, the evidence necessary to establish liability is often under the exclusive control of the state, which has an incentive to conceal this evidence, and thus international human rights bodies have held circumstantial, documentary, and testimonial evidence to be admissible in their investigations of "disappearances."[59]

States are obligated to bring perpetrators of serious criminal offenses to justice.This obligation is independent of the wishes of victims, who for various reasons- including being subject to intimidation-may not press for prosecutions.[61] Significantly, the UN Human Rights Committee in its comments to India's report prepared under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), urged "that judicial inquiries be mandatory in all cases of death at the hands of the security and armed forces and that the judges in such inquiriesbe empowered to direct the prosecution of security and armed forces personnel."[62] In no circumstances, including a state of war or public emergency, shall immunity from prosecution be granted to alleged perpetrators of extra-judicial executions.[63] The enforcement of judgments is also a crucial aspect of the right to an effective remedy.[64]

International law sets out various reparations mechanisms.According to the Human Rights Committee, the ICCPR:

requires that States Parties make reparation to individuals whose Covenant rights have been violated. Without reparation to individuals whose Covenant rights have been violated, the obligation to provide an effective remedy, which is central to the efficacy of [enforcing the ICCPR] is not discharged. [T]he Covenant generally entails appropriate compensation. [W]here appropriate, reparation can involve restitution, rehabilitation and measures of satisfaction, such as public apologies, public memorials, guarantees of non-repetition and changes in relevant laws and practices, as well as bringing to justice the perpetrators of human rights violations.

Superior responsibility

Combating impunity requires the identification of the specific perpetrators of the violations. The doctrine of superior responsibility imposes liability on superiors-with either de jure or de facto command-for the unlawful acts of their subordinates, where the superior knew or had reason to know of the unlawful acts, and failed to prevent and/or punish those acts.[66] The doctrine of superior responsibility is well-established and is part of customary international law.[67]

A superior possesses the requisite culpable mental state for the imposition of criminal liability when he has actual knowledge or "reason to know" that his subordinates were committing crimes.[68] A superior's actual knowledge is "established through direct or circumstantial evidence."[69] The second type of knowledge-"had reason to know"-requires the superior to remain informed about the activities of his subordinates; he cannot willfully blind himself.[70] The superior can be liable if he possessed any information that should have put him on notice of crimes committed or about to be committed by his subordinates. Although the superior cannot be expected to "perform the impossible," he would be held criminally liable for failing to take actions within his "material possibility." The lack of formal legal competence does not preclude responsibility.[71]

Indian law

International law not inconsistent with municipal law is part of India's law.[72]The Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed the respect given to the national implementation of international law, and the need to accommodate international law "even without express legislative sanction."[73]Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that international law can be incorporated into the fundamental rights under the Indian Constitution.[74] Thus, the standards of international human rights law, including the right to an effective remedy in cases of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions, are part of the fundamental rights protected by the Indian Constitution.

When fundamental rights are at stake, Article 32 of the Indian Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to forge new remedies and fashion new strategies designed to enforce these rights.[75]Its power is both injunctive and remedial.[76] For example, in addition to awarding compensation for illegal detention, the Supreme Court has issued detailed mandatory directions that all law enforcement officials must comply with when they arrest or detain any person.[77] These requirements were issued to supplement constitutional and statutory safeguards. The court has also established guidelines and norms not addressed in existing legislation.[78] In creating commissions, the Supreme Court has stressed that the proceedings must be appropriate not in terms of any specific form, but in reference to the purpose to enforce fundamental rights.[79] The commission can even diverge from the adversarial procedure[80] to allow for a procedure more sensitive to victims' rights in situations of reparation for gross human rights violations. The court also has the power to issue directions to the state, including the taking of positive action such as augmenting the investigative machinery and setting up new courts in order to ensure a speedy trial.[81]

All of the individuals interviewed for this report deplored the lack of an effective remedy for "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions by the Punjab police. They repeatedly stressed that the Indian government's offers of compensation did not equal justice. Many viewed the offer of money, in the absence of justice, as an effort to buy their silence. For the family members of victims, justice includes establishing the truth of what happened to their loved ones and holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes.

V. Failure of Justice

He was just a boy.I want to know what they did with him.

-Darshan Kaur, mother of victim

The cases detailed in this chapter highlight different aspects of the impunity that has prevailed since the Punjab counterinsurgency operations from 1984 to 1995. These cases reflect the failure of various government institutions including the police, the judiciary, the Central Bureau of Investigation, and the National Human Rights Commission to ensure accountability and redress for gross human rights violations.

Many observers had hoped that the Punjab mass cremations case described in detail immediately below would redress the systematic "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions perpetrated by Indian security forces. After 11 years of proceedings that have excluded victim participation, relied solely on police admissions, failed to identify responsible officials, and offered only limited compensation to a small subset of victims' families, many victims' families now feel the government condones the abuses and the denial of justice.

Another case detailed below, that of murdered human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra, demonstrates the hurdles families face in pursuing individual cases, as well as the government's reluctance to pursue investigations and charges against the alleged architects of these systematic abuses. This case, and the others we discuss in this chapter, highlights biases within the prosecuting authority, the challenges brought on by prolonged trials, the police's role in the destruction of evidence and fabrication of records, and police intimidation and abuses suffered by survivors of those killed by the police.

In each case, the families continue to call for justice for the "disappearance" or extrajudicial execution of their loved one. These families have stated that they cannot move forward in their lives without knowledge, justice, and reparations.

A. NHRC and the Punjab mass cremations case

Human rights groups have uncovered basic facts of the gross human rights violations perpetrated by Indian security forces in Punjab during the counterinsurgency, including details of the destruction of evidence through thousands of secret cremations. In 1996, after reviewing evidence of mass cremations, the Supreme Court appointed the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to address these violations.

During the past decade of the proceedings before the NHRC, the Commission has failed to apply Indian or international human rights standards to investigate and provide proper reparations for these abuses. Although the NHRC has failed to provide a remedy for these abuses, because the Supreme Court retains jurisdiction in this case and will review the NHRC's actions, it will provide the ultimate resolution of the mass cremations case that will set a precedent in India on redressing mass state crimes.

In 1995, after human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra released official records exposing the mass secret cremations perpetrated by the Punjab police in Amritsar district, the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP) moved the Supreme Court to demand a comprehensive inquiry into extrajudicial executions throughout Punjab.[82] After Punjab police "disappeared" Jaswant Singh Khalra, the Supreme Court eventually ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's premier investigative agency, to investigate these crimes.[83]

The CBI submitted its final report on December 9, 1996,[84] limiting its investigations to Amritsar district. The CBI's report, which the Supreme Court sealed, listed 2,097 illegal cremations at three cremation grounds of Amritsar district-then one of 13 districts in Punjab.[85] Khalra himself, however, had discussed over 6,000 cremations in Amritsar district.[86] Moreover, CIIP had stated in its original writ petition that interviews with cremation ground workers disclosed that multiple people were often cremated with the firewood normally required for completely burning one body.[87] Thus, many more than 2,097 bodies could have been cremated.

In December 1996, the Supreme Court referred the mass cremations case to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC or "Commission"), observing that the CBI's inquiry report disclosed a "flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale." In this case, the Supreme Court appointed the NHRC as its sui generis body, with the extraordinary powers of the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Indian Constitution to redress fundamental human rights violations. The Supreme Court requested the NHRC "to have the matter examined in accordance with law and determine all the issues which are raised before the Commission by the learned counsel for the parties," and also ordered that any compensation awarded by the NHRC would be "binding and payable."[88] Thus, the NHRC had the powers to forge new remedies and fashion new strategies to enforce fundamental human rights.[89]

The Supreme Court also entrusted the CBI with investigations into the culpability of police officials in the secret cremations case,[90]leaving "all the issues which are raised before the Commission" to the NHRC.[91]

Unfortunately, throughout the decade-long proceedings, the NHRC ignored the fundamental rights violations that had occurred in Punjab and thus shielded perpetrators from accountability. It refused to allow a single victim family to testify and failed to conduct any independent investigations towards identifying responsible officers. Instead, the NHRC based its findings on information provided by the Punjab police, the perpetrators of the crimes. Furthermore, the Commission refused to consider mass cremations, extrajudicial executions, and "disappearances" throughout the rest of Punjab. Despite having wide powers under Article 32, the NHRC's actions were restrictive even when compared to steps it has taken in other cases under its normal limited powers. For example, the NHRC has often sent its own investigatory teams sua sponte to examine violations based on news reports, and has even filed lawsuits to challenge judgments and request the transfer of trials relating to the Gujarat pogroms.[92]

In its over ten years of proceedings in the Punjab mass cremations case, the NHRC compensated the next of kin of 1,051 individuals for the wrongful cremation of their loved ones, where the Punjab police did not follow the rules for proper cremations, and 194 individuals for the violation of the right to life, where the Punjab police admitted custody prior to death but did not admit liability for the unlawful killing.

In October 2006, the NHRC appointed retired Punjab and Haryana High Court Justice K.S. Bhalla as a commissioner for conducting an inquiry in Amritsar ("Bhalla Commission" or "Amritsar Commission of Inquiry") to identify the remaining cremation victims from the CBI list under its consideration, if possible, within eight months.[93]

From 1997 to 1999, the Punjab mass cremations litigation stalled over the powers of the NHRC to adjudicate the case. The main question was whether the Commission possessed the Supreme Court's powers under Article 32 of the Constitution, or if the Commission was bound by the act that created it, the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 (PHRA).[94] The PHRA limits the Commission's oversight in its regular operations to violations that occurred within a year of the filing of the complaint, grants only recommendatory powers to the NHRC, and prevents it from investigating abuses by armed forces, among other restrictions.[95] In August 1997, the NHRC stated that it possessed the court's Article 32 powers in this case, quoting a key Supreme Court case on Article 32:

We have therefore to abandon the laissez faire approach in the judicial process particularly where it involves a question of enforcement of fundamental rights and forge new tools, devise new methods and adopt new strategies for the purpose of making fundamental rights meaningful for the large masses of people...

It is for this reason that the Supreme Court has evolved the practice of appointing commissions for the purpose of gathering facts and data in regard to a complaint of breach of a fundamental right. [96]

That same day, the NHRC issued a second order on proceedings, proposing the invitation of claims by public notice and inquiries "to ascertain whether the deaths and subsequent cremations or both were the results of acts which constituted violation of human rights or constituted negligence on the part of the State and its authorities."[97]The Union of India litigated the NHRC's powers back to the Supreme Court, challenging its jurisdiction over the mass cremations case.[98] In 1998, the Supreme Court held that in the Punjab mass cremations case, the NHRC possessed the court's Article 32 powers, the NHRC was not limited by the Protection of Human Rights Act, and the Supreme Court retained final jurisdiction over the case.[99]

Although this order meant that the NHRC was fully equipped to investigate the widespread and systematic human rights abuses that had occurred throughout Punjab because it possessed the extraordinary powers of Article 32, in January 1999, the NHRC pronounced an order on the scope of its inquiry, limiting itself to the 2,097 cremations stated by the CBI to have occurred in three crematoria in Amritsar district, and divided the cremations into three lists of identified, partially identified, and unidentified cremations.[100] The limited mandate meant the NHRC would only consider victims of unlawful killings whose bodies were: (1) disposed of through cremation, and not other methods; (2) cremated in one of the three crematoria investigated by the CBI in one of then 13 districts in Punjab; (3) cremated between 1984 and 1994; and (4) included in the CBI's list of 2,097 cremations.

The CIIP challenged this restriction several times before the NHRC and ultimately to the Supreme Court.[101] The NHRC insisted on its limited mandate and the Supreme Court refused to intervene at that stage.[102] The NHRC thus ignored its Article 32 powers in this case.[103]

Throughout the entire proceedings, the NHRC refused to investigate a single case of illegal cremation.[104] It relied solely on the accused-the Punjab police-to provide or confirm identification information on victims of illegal cremations. Even in cases where CIIP submitted identification information on partially identified or unidentified cremations, which it had derived by correlating the information available on the death with its database of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions, the NHRC accepted the identification only if it was confirmed by the Punjab police.[105] Only in one case did the NHRC reject the police version of events based on inconsistencies between an affidavit by the Punjab police and a petition filed by the state of Punjab concerning the same cremation.[106]

The NHRC also relied on the police to determine the type of violations. Only where the police were willing to admit custody of the victim prior to his or her death, did the Commission find a violation of the right to life based on the principle of strict liability.[107] The Punjab police never admitted to direct liability or responsibility for violating anyone's rights, including victims' right to life or liberty, and continued to maintain that the victims were mainly terrorists or criminals killed in cross-fire.[108] The NHRC identified 194 such cases out of the list of 2,097 cremations.[109]

Where the police denied they had prior custody of the victim but acknowledged that they had illegally cremated the person-in 1,051 cases-the NHRC found that the dignity of the dead had been violated.[110] In determining the violation of the dignity of the dead, the NHRC relied primarily on the solicitor general's admission that the Punjab police had not followed the rules for cremating unidentified bodies.[111] Of the original lists drawn up by the CBI, 814 cremation victims remained unidentified, and an additional 38 cases were excluded as duplicates identified by the state of Punjab.[112]These victims were passed to the Amritsar Commission of Inquiry for identification by the NHRC's October 9, 2006 order.[113] The Bhalla Commission subsequently reduced this list to 800 cremations, based on submissions by the Punjab police.

In no case did the NHRC accept testimony from family members or witnesses, despite the drastically differing accounts put forward by the families and the accused. Nor did the NHRC accept challenges to the police version of events, based on victim testimony. It relied on the Punjab police for the identifications despite several troubling indications of lack of trustworthiness and impartiality, not surprising considering that the Punjab police was investigating its own colleagues. The NHRC itself found a serious lapse by the Punjab police for obviously concealing information at the time of cremation, and only revealing that information years later in litigation-as evidenced by their subsequent ability to identify 663 victims of illegal cremations during the proceedings before the NHRC.[115]

The NHRC failed to challenge the police version of events despite police admissions of forging the identities of its cremation victims. In February 2006, Punjab state officials admitted that the Punjab police had forged the identities of cremation victims in order to protect over 300 police informants living under assumed identities.[116] The informants were alleged to have been killed in police encounters and cremated as unidentified bodies. However, these informants were given new identities and innocent individuals were killed and cremated in their place. This admission means that the true identities of the cremation victims cannot be established until the Punjab police reveals the identities of the victims killed and cremated in lieu of the informants.[117]

The CIIP demonstrated to the NHRC that the Punjab police had fabricated at least one identification when the next of kin of the decedent admitted to Ensaaf that his father, the alleged secret cremation victim, a former police officer, had died of natural causes at home. A police contact, offering compensation, encouraged him to agree to having his father identified as a victim of a secret cremation.[118] When the CIIP presented this information at a February 2007 hearing of the NHRC, after some argument, the Chairperson instructed the state, which had submitted the incorrect identification, to re-investigate only that identification.[119] At the subsequent hearing, the state submitted that it had made a mistake in the identification.[120] The NHRC has not yet pronounced a ruling on this issue.

Throughout the proceedings, the NHRC has failed to investigate the illegality of individual killings, the role of state security forces or their agents in planning or carrying out illegal killings, other rights violations suffered by family members, or the identities of individual perpetrators, among other issues. Instead, in its orders granting compensation, the NHRC repeatedly stated that it was not expressing any opinion regarding culpability or responsibility for even the limited rights violations that it had identified.[121] The NHRC maintained that it did not want to prejudice the investigations being carried out by the CBI.[122] While the NHRC was not specifically instructed to establish criminal liability, under its Article 32 mandate, it was empowered to conduct detailed investigations capable of establishing the rights violations perpetrated as well as the identity of the responsible officials. In fact, in its August 1997 order, the NHRC had held that it would award compensation "only after the factual foundations are laid establishing liability."[123]

The NHRC acted without regard for individual liability with its August 2000 order on 88 claims. In its submissions before the NHRC, the state of Punjab proposed awarding compensation to only 18 of the 88 claimants, with no admission of liability or guilt. The NHRC endorsed the proposal by the state:

For this conclusion it does not matter whether the custody was lawful or unlawful or the exercise of power of control over the person was justified or not, and it is not necessary even to identify the individual officer or officers responsible/concerned. [124]

All of the families submitted affidavits through CIIP rejecting any proposed compensation, stating that arbitrary cash doles did not meet their expectations of justice.[125]

The NHRC has used the principle of strict liability to attribute liability to the state, ignoring the individual actors. Thus, based on the principle of strict liability rather than any findings of wrongdoing by specific officials, the state was ordered to pay compensation to 194 individuals for violating their right to life, and to 1,051 individuals for violating the dignity of the dead.[126] The use of strict liability resulted in the preclusion of investigations, where the establishment of direct liability was possible. For example, in many cases, the records of the cremation grounds identified the police station and officer who deposited the body for cremation. Thus, the perpetrators of the illegal cremation were identifiable and the Commission should have held them directly liable. However, the NHRC's application of strict liability with the total exclusion of direct liability, combined with the ineffectiveness of CBI prosecutions, has resulted in de facto impunity for the perpetrators.

Developing a comprehensive reparations policy requires extensive investigation to clarify the extent of human rights violations, the potential beneficiaries, and the nature of injuries suffered, among other issues. International law identifies various methods of reparations, as discussed above. The NHRC has not come close to meeting this standard. Instead it has offered an arbitrarily determined amount of money only to a small subset of victims' families. Given the NHRC's failures to establish what happened to their loved ones or to identify the security officers responsible for abuses, many families who have been offered compensation, moreover, have perceived the offer as an attempt to buy their silence.[127]

In its first major compensation order in November 2004, the NHRC quoted Supreme Court precedentwhich stated that the amount of compensation depended on the facts of each case.[128] The NHRC asserted, "Indeed, the quantum of compensation depends upon the circumstance of each case and there is no rule of thumb which can be applied to all cases nor even a universally applicable formula." This reiterated a holding from the NHRC's August 1997 order where it stated, "Indeed the question of quantification of compensation will arrise [sic] only after the factual foundations are laid establishing liability and, only thereafter, the questions of quantification follow."[129] Notwithstanding this precedent, the NHRC proceeded to award the same lump sum in every case in which the Punjab police admitted having had custody of the victim prior to the cremation.[130] It subsequently defined "factual foundations" to mean the violation of the dignity of the dead as a result of the unlawful cremation, not the "manner and method of killing."[131] Thus, in over 10 years of proceedings, the Commission was not able to establish any new factual foundations; the fact of illegal cremation had been established by the CBI and Supreme Court in 1996.

CIIP solicited the intervention of international human rights groups to demonstrate the need to investigate the violations of the right to life and the physical and psychological trauma suffered by victims' family members. Without such an understanding, the NHRC would not be able to develop or provide meaningful reparations. During a ten-day evaluation of 127 families in May 2005, organized by Ensaaf, experts of the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (Bellevue) assessed the torture and trauma suffered by families of some of the "disappeared" and extrajudicially executed persons, whose cases were part of the Punjab mass cremations case before the NHRC. The expert report submitted at the NHRC hearing on October 24, 2005, demonstrated that the deprivation of life occurred within a pattern of violations that included intentional abuse of multiple family members of the "disappeared" or extrajudicially executed person. The PHR/Bellevue evaluation found alarming rates of current and past psychological and physical suffering among the family members.[132] The CIIP called on the Commission to summon the authors of the report to testify.[133]

The Commission rejected the report and attacked the authors' professional credibility.[134] The Commission did not attempt to resolve any of the objections it discussed in its order, in writing or at the multiple hearings that occurred between the report's submission in October 2005 and the order issued regarding the report in October 2006. PHR and Bellevue responded to the NHRC's order with an open letter in December 2006.[135]

In its last major order on October 9, 2006, the NHRC dismissed CIIP's arguments regarding the development of a comprehensive reparations program. The NHRC stated that it was sure the state of Punjab was fulfilling its obligations, and the NHRC did not feel compelled to make an order:

[T]he Learned Solicitor General stated that the State of Punjab had been taking all such steps as are necessary to heal the wounds of the effected families.It is an obligation of every civilized State to ensure that its acts, which have been found to be violative of humanitarian laws and/or which impinge upon human rights of the citizens, do not reoccur. We have no doubt that the State of Punjab as well as the Union of India are alive to their obligations in this behalf and would take appropriate steps which would also restore institutional integrity. We have also no doubt that the State of Punjab would offer medical/psychological assistance to a member/members of any such family which has suffered as a result of the tragedy, who approaches it, at State expense so that the healing process started by it becomes meaningful. In view of the statement of the learned Solicitor General no further directions in that behalf are as such necessary to be issued by the Commission. [136]

The Commission thus left the development of reparations to the goodwill of Punjab, which has not only consistently denied the rights violations and refused to accept responsibility throughout the proceedings, but has also failed to take any reparative steps to heal the wounds of the families.

We provide some examples below where the NHRC's interpretation of its mandate has left out individuals who suffered violations of the rights to life and liberty. By limiting its mandate to these 2,097 cremations, the NHRC has excluded:

Victims of "disappearances" by Indian security forces, where the families have no knowledge of the victim's ultimate fate;

Victims of unlawful killings whose bodies were dumped in bodies of water, dismembered and dispersed, or disposed of through other methods;

Victims of unlawful killings whom the Punjab police illegally cremated in other districts of Punjab;

Victims of unlawful killings whom the Punjab police illegally cremated prior to 1984 and after 1994 in the three crematoria at issue in Amritsar district;

Victims of unlawful killings whom the Punjab police illegally cremated, but who were not included in the CBI's list of 2097 cremations, including those cremated at other cremation grounds in Amritsar district; and

Victims of other human rights violations, such as custodial torture and illegal detention.

The case of Jugraj Singh, son of Mohinder Singh

This case illustrates the exclusion of cases of individuals cremated in Amritsar after 1994, and therefore outside the NHRC's limited mandate. Jugraj Singh was abducted from Ropar district, but killed and cremated in Amritsar district in January 1995. (This case is discussed in detail later in this chapter to illustrate the failure of the courts in addressing extrajudicial executions.)

On January 14, 1995, 27-year-old Jugraj Singh, a taxi driver, was driving his Maruti van towards the market of Phase III B-2 Mohali, Ropar, to get his vehicle repaired. As he proceeded, individuals in civilian clothes signaled him to stop. An eyewitness later told Mohinder Singh, Jugraj Singh's father, that the individuals who stopped the van had been waiting for a while and had come to the market in a Maruti car with registration No. PCO-42.When Jugraj stopped his vehicle, these individuals forcibly entered his van and had him drive away.

The next day, Mohinder Singh went to the police station to register a complaint, stating that people had witnessed his son's abduction by the police. The day after, he visited the market and spoke to the owner of the shop next to the mechanic's shop. This man confirmed that he had seen Jugraj in a van with police, and that the police had also abducted Sukhdev Singh from his shop.[137]

The police reported that Jugraj Singh was killed on January 15, 1995, in Amritsar in what they claimed was an armed encounter. Considering that eyewitnesses saw Jugraj Singh being abducted by the police, his father Mohinder Singh believes he was killed in a faked encounter.[138] According to a CBI inquiry, officials of the Municipal Corporation in Amritsar cremated his body.[139] Because his son was killed one month after the time boundary fixed by the Supreme Court and the NHRC, Jugraj Singh has been excluded from the Punjab mass cremations case.

- The case of Charrat Singh and Rashpal Singh, sons of Gurbachan Singh

- On November 17, 1988, Gurbachan Singh's youngest son Rashpal Singh, about 15 or 16 years old, was traveling on a bus to visit his maternal family, when Punjab police stopped the bus and removed Rashpal and another youth. That same day, the newspapers reported that the police killed five persons in an alleged encounter. Gurbachan Singh learned that those five persons were cremated at Durgiana Mandir cremation ground in Amritsar-one of the cremation grounds investigated by the CBI. After speaking to employees there, Gurbachan Singh believes that his son was one of the individuals cremated because his son matched the physical description of a victim. His cremation, however, does not appear on the CBI list, and has thus been excluded from the Punjab mass cremations case by the NHRC's limited mandate.

On June 18, 1989, between 4 and 5 p.m., approximately 100 security personnel from the Punjab police, Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA) Staff, and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) raided Gurbachan Singh's village Johal Raju Singh in Tarn Taran, Punjab. Gurbachan Singh told Ensaaf:

The security forces proceeded to my residence and then my fields, where my son Charrat Singh and I were working. The Punjab police grabbed Charrat Singh and me, brought us to the small tube-well by the village, and began to savagely beat my son with their rifle butts. They drove away with me and my son, but dropped me off on the way, and that was the last time I saw him. The security forces took my son to CIA Staff, Tarn Taran. Many folks from the village accompanied me to CIA Staff, where we asked to see my son and requested his release, but the police refused.[140]

On June 24, 1989, the Punjabi daily Ajit reported that unidentified persons had been killed in an encounter. A few days later, Gurbachan Singh and his family went to Police Station Tarn Taran (Sadar) to verify the news of the killing:

At the police station, we spoke with the clerk, who showed us a pile of clothes, and asked if we recognized any of them. Among the articles of clothing, we recognized the parna (small turban) worn by Charrat Singh on the day the security forces abducted him. We were allowed to view Charrat Singh's parna, but the clerk did not allow us to take it with us.[141]

Gurbachan Singh did not receive the bodies of either of his "disappeared" sons, nor was he informed of their cremations, but he believes them both to have been killed by the Punjab police.

In response to the November 2006 notice issued by the Amritsar Commission of Inquiry, Gurbachan Singh submitted claims regarding both his sons. His claim for Rashpal Singh was never considered because Rashpal Singh's cremation did not appear on the CBI list.

Justice Bhalla eventually allowed Gurbachan Singh to submit information on Charrat Singh's death because Charrat Singh's cremation matched an unidentified cremation on the CBI list of 814 remaining unidentified cremations. The Punjab police, however, rejected the identification of Charrat Singh.[142] Justice Bhalla confirmed the police's rejection of the identification, stating that Gurbachan Singh's affidavit was not sufficient because Gurbachan Singh himself did not see Charrat Singh's dead body. Justice Bhalla did not mention Gurbachan Singh's identification of Charrat Singh's belongings in police custody .[143]

The unlawful killings of Gurbachan Singh's two sons highlight the disparate remedies available because of arbitrary distinctions resulting from the NHRC's limited mandate and failure to investigate cases.

- The case of Mehal Singh and Gurmail Singh, sons of Dara Singh

- Dara Singh lost two of his four sons to extrajudicial killings: his youngest son Mehal Singh, aged 16, and his oldest son Gurmail Singh, aged 37.[144] The NHRC did not acknowledge Dara Singh's submission regarding Gurmail Singh because its limited mandate excluded cremations outside of Amritsar.In August 2000, the State of Punjab found 18 cases eligible for compensation with no admission

of liability or wrongdoing, including that of Mehal Singh. Dara Singh rejected this compensation. Despite the fact that the individuals in these cases had been fully identified, the case of his son later reappeared on the unidentified list.[145] The Punjab police now denies that Mehal Singh's body was ever identified.[146] The Bhalla Commission has also rejected the identification of Mehal Singh's remains, because his father did not see his dead body and the doctor who conducted the post mortem and confirmed his son's identity did not depose before the Commission.[147]

Dara Singh told Ensaaf:

My youngest son Mehal Singh was an apprentice at a tractor repair workshop in Tarn Taran. On the night of June 17 to 18, 1989, [names of police officers withheld] from Tarn Taran (Sadar) police station led a heavy police force including the Punjab police and the CRPF, in raiding my house. It was after midnight when they came.

The security forces began beating me and my sons. They tied our hands behind our backs and lined us up facing a wall in the courtyard and threatened to execute us right then. The security forces thoroughly searched the house, and stole several valuable items, but did not recover anything incriminating. [148]

They then detained us at the police station for two hours and continued beating us, especially Mehal Singh. [Names of two police officers withheld] started torturing Mehal Singh. Around 5 a.m., they transferred all of us to the CIA Staff Interrogation Centre in Tarn Taran. There again, they segregated Mehal Singh and tortured him under the supervision of [name of third police officer withheld]. The rest of us were seated on the floor outside of the cell where they were torturing him, and we could hear his shrieks from the torture. Later that day, they transferred all of us, except Mehal Singh, to the Tarn Taran Sadar police station. They detained us for two days and interrogated us about weapons and threatened to kill us. [149]

The police officers released all of them, except Mehal Singh, on June 19, 1989. Dara Singh said he then immediately collected many respectable people from his area and went to CIA Staff Tarn Taran to inquire about Mehal Singh. Gurbachan Singh of village Johal Raju Singh, whose testimony is cited above, joined the delegation since his son Charrat Singh had also been abducted by the Tarn Taran police. But the station house officer denied custody of Mehal Singh and Charrat Singh. Dara Singh told Ensaaf:

Every day thereafter, I waited by the butcher shop [referring to CIA Staff Tarn Taran] to see if they would release my son. On June 24, by chance, I was by the entrance to the civil hospital where they conduct post mortems. There, I saw a tractor-trolley parked, and I guessed that there were bodies in the trolley. I went towards the trolley and attempted to climb in to see if my son was inside, but a policeman, who was sitting in the passenger's seat, warned me not to get in. The trolley took off a few moments later. I followed the trolley, [walking] to the cremation ground by myself, which took about an hour.

- At the cremation ground, I met one of the workers. He said that the police had just dropped off two bodies for cremation, and pointed to where they were being cremated. There were several other bodies being cremated in a line. I went to the cremations he indicated.

I wasn't certain that the bodies were Mehal Singh and Charrat Singh, so I continued to try to find out what happened to them.

About 8 to 10 days later, Dara Singh and a colleague who knew the doctor who performed post mortems at the civil hospital, went and spoke to the doctor. The doctor told him that he had conducted post mortems on two youth who fit the description of Mehal Singh and Gurbachan Singh's son Charrat Singh. The doctor further described the clothes the boys were wearing. Dara Singh told Ensaaf:

We hired an attorney and obtained an order from a judge in Tarn Taran directing the police to show us the clothes in their possession. We took the order to Tarn Taran (Sadar) Police Station and spoke with the SHO. He said that we should perform our religious rites for the dead for Mehal Singh and Charrat Singh. We took this to mean that they were dead. [151]

The police continued to harass Dara Singh and his family, detaining them two to three more times. They wanted the family to produce Gurmail Singh, Dara Singh's eldest son:

In the second week of June 1990, Gurmail Singh joined a Kar Sewa group renovating a gurdwara at village Gharam in Patiala district on the Punjab-Haryana border. Ten or 12 days later, a group of police officers from Ambala district in Haryana came to our village and made inquiries about the identity of Gurmail Singh, who, according to a newspaper report, had been killed in an encounter along with four other militants. The newspaper report did not mention my son's name, but called him an unidentified militant. However, I recognized my son's photograph that was published in the article. Fearing further reprisals against my remaining sons, I

didn't pursue the matter. The families of the other encounter victims told us that the youth had been cremated in Ambala, the place of the encounter. [152]

In 1999, Dara Singh responded to the NHRC's notice for claims regarding mass cremations. He submitted claims on behalf of Mehal Singh and Gurmail Singh. The NHRC decided that the family was eligible to receive compensation for the wrongful cremation of Mehal Singh, but Dara Singh rejected the compensation:[153]

Money is not justice. The police murdered both of my sons, and they won't even admit that they did something wrong. They call my sons terrorists! The police are the terrorists.. The government should also give us copies of their records relating to the murder of my sons, so we can figure out what really happened. [154]

In its October 9, 2006 order, which effectively closed all of the major issues dealing with the matter of police abductions leading to "disappearances" and secret cremations in Punjab, the NHRC appointed a commissioner of inquiry in Amritsar, retired High Court Judge K.S. Bhalla, to identify as many as possible of the remaining 814 cremation victims from the CBI list within eight months. The number of unidentified cremations was subsequently revised to 800.

After its appointment, the Bhalla Commission and NHRC held ex parte meetings, excluding the petitioner CIIP.[156] As a result, the NHRC issued an order on October 30, 2006, that limited participation in the Bhalla Commission proceedings to those families who were among the 1,857 families who had submitted claims in response to NHRC public notices issued in 1999 and 2004. The NHRC also restricted all 1,857 claimants from participating in the proceedings by requiring the claimants to resubmit their claims in response to a public notice issued in November 2006.[157] The end result was that only 70 of 1,857 claimants were eligible to participate in the Bhalla Commission proceedings.[158] In its October 30, 2006 order, the NHRC did not provide any rationale or legal justification for narrowing participation in the Bhalla Commission through such a procedure.

The NHRC limited Justice Bhalla's mandate to identifying the remaining illegal cremations, but placed no further restrictions. However, Justice Bhalla demonstrated little interest in the underlying facts. In his February 3, 2007 order, he explicitly stated that human rights violations by the police did not fall within his scope of inquiry.[159]Further, at the April 10, 2007 hearing, Justice Bhalla stated:

Naturally, if the police had known the identity of the individuals, they would have turned over their bodies to the families. What interest would they have in keeping the bodies? [160]

This comment reflected Justice Bhalla's dismissal of the contention that the police purposely covered up the identities of the individuals and destroyed their bodies in order to eliminate significant forensic evidence of torture and custodial death.

Justice Bhalla continued the NHRC practice of relying on the Punjab police for identifications or confirmations of victims of illegal cremations, instead of developing an independent methodology or conducting his own investigations.

While CIIP and other petitioners submitted identification information to Justice Bhalla, he waited for confirmation from the Punjab police. If the Punjab police rejected the identification, Justice Bhalla placed insurmountable evidentiary burdens on the petitioners, requiring them to produce evidence of the dead body or cremation.

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At the initial hearings, through written and oral argument, the CIIP urged the Commission to adopt a rigorous methodology to resolve the unidentified cremations, and require the State to produce police records, post mortem reports, habeas corpus petitions, and news reports on abductions, "disappearances" and encounters. The CIIP also urged the Commission to solicit claims from throughout Punjab and allow all prior and new claimants to participate in the proceedings. The Bhalla Commission rejected these arguments at the February 3, 2007 hearing.[161]

Justice Bhalla further restricted the access of relatives to the commission, stating that victim families could not submit claims directly to the Commission, although they could provide information for the limited purpose of identification through CIIP or other petitioners. He did not explain how families excluded by the October 2006 NHRC order and November 2006 notice would know that they had this limited option. It was clear, however, that Justice Bhalla would not allow these families to testify.

The NHRC and Bhalla Commissions never acknowledged the possibility that the remaining 800 unidentified bodies could not be identified from the pool of 1,857 prior claims, and that a more inclusive process of participation was required if the Commissions were serious about establishing the identities of all 800 victims. At least 10 percent of the victims previously identified by the NHRC as having been secretly cremated in Amritsar lived outside of Amritsar district.[162] The CIIP repeatedly suggested issuing a public notice throughout Punjab, inviting all victim families who believed their relatives may have been cremated in Amritsar to submit claims; these suggestions were rejected by the Bhalla Commission.[163]

The Bhalla Commission held its last hearing on June 29, 2007, and presumably submitted its final report to the NHRC. This report, according to the NHRC's October 30, 2006 order, was due on June 30, 2007. The petitioners have not yet received a copy of the report. The NHRC initially scheduled a hearing for August 2007, but has postponed the hearing three times.[164]

B. CBI failure to investigate extrajudicial killings

The Supreme Court had entrusted the CBI with investigations into the culpability of police officials in the secret cremations case.[165] The CBI was ordered to submit quarterly confidential progress reports.[166]Over 10 years later, the petitioners have no information regarding whether there have been any prosecutions.

In a July 1996 order, the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to register three cases-those which had specifically been mentioned in Jaswant Singh Khalra's press release regarding his investigations: Pargat Singh "Bullet," Piyara Singh, and Baghel Singh.[167] The Punjab police responded that Baghel Singh was run over by a truck while being brought to Amritsar,[168] Piyara Singh was killed by an ambush while being taken for recovery of weapons,[169] and Pargat Singh was killed in an encounter.[170]

The case of two Pargat Singhs

The case of Pargat Singh "Bullet" illustrates the Punjab police's practice of falsely identifying cremation victims, and the CBI's collusion in that practice.

At the time of the July 1996 Supreme Court order mandating a CBI investigation into Pargat Singh's death, the only information available was the date and place of cremation, the police station allegedly involved in the abduction and illegal cremation, and that Pargat Singh had allegedly been undergoing treatment at the Guru Nanak Dev hospital in Amritsar.[171]

But Pargat Singh has never properly been identified. One man, retired army officer Baldev Singh, claims he saw his son, named Pargat Singh, being cremated. However, the CBI and police have refused to respond to his pleas, and instead insist that the Pargat Singh that was cremated by Punjab police was the son of another man we can only identify as G. Singh at his son's request. Both Pargat Singhs were nicknamed "Bullet."

In the first year of the legal proceedings, Baldev Singh submitted an affidavit through CIIP regarding the extrajudicial execution and illegal cremation of his son, known as "Bullet," after his detention by the Punjab police on September 19, 1992, from a movie theatre in Amritsar.[172]

The police started questioning Pargat Singh and his family in October 1988 and tortured Pargat Singh during six days of illegal detention. Later, when the police could not find Pargat Singh because he had gone underground, they illegally detained and tortured Pargat Singh's father and older brother. Baldev Singh told Ensaaf:

[T]hey arrested me over 200 times during a period of two-and-a-half years and tortured me on many of those occasions. They would always ask me to turn over my son. But how could I? He was underground and never came home. During those days, the entire family stayed away from home. If I wasn't home when the police came, they would take my wife and son and wouldn't release them until I turned myself in. [173]

On September 20, 1992, Baldev Singh learned that Pargat Singh "Bullet" had been taken into police detention. He learned of the detention from his sister who met Pargat Singh in custody when she visited her son who had also been detained. (Her son was later released).

Baldev Singh immediately went to the police station to look for his son but was refused. He then began desperately to try to locate his son. One deputy superintendent of police (DSP) confirmed to a close police contact of Baldev Singh's that Pargat Singh was in police detention, but refused to release him. Baldev Singh also learned that the police took Pargat Singh to B.R.ModelSchool, an unofficial interrogation center, and tortured him.

Five days later, Baldev Singh asked another person who knew the district's senior superintendent of police (SSP) to inquire after Pargat Singh. Baldev Singh said,

The SSP told him that Pargat Singh had been taken to the hospital for treatment. After that, I have no idea where they detained Pargat Singh or what they did to him, until I learned about his encounter. [174]

On the morning of November 5, Baldev Singh's friend met with the SSP to ask about Pargat Singh. This time Baldev Singh heard that his son had been killed:

The SSP told him that yesterday they had killed Pargat Singh in an encounter and would cremate his body that day at Durgiana Mandir. The SSP further said that they would not turn over his body. [175]

The same day, Baldev Singh also read in the paper that Pargat Singh "Bullet" had been killed in an encounter. A former member of parliament (MP) from Amritsar, who had been helping the family locate Pargat Singh, called the SSP of Tarn Taran and asked for the body for cremation. The SSP told the MP they could attend the cremation at Durgiana Mandir cremation ground at 4 p.m. The MP advised Baldev Singh to go to the cremation ground immediately, since he could not trust the police. Baldev Singh recounted in his affidavit how he witnessed the cremation of his son:

I went to the cremation ground at Durgiana temple to ask whether the police had already cremated him [Pargat Singh]. He had not been. Then I went to the GeneralHospital [Guru Nanak Dev hospital] where his post mortem had been conducted. There I talked to an employee who had helped with the post mortem. He gave a detailed description of the body confirming that the person murdered in the faked encounter was indeed my son Pragat [sic]. He also told me that the police had taken the body away for the cremation. I rushed back to the cremation ground. The pyre had already been lit. [176]

Baldev Singh told Ensaaf:

Pargat Singh's body had just started to burn from the head. His body was on a stack of firewood, and then more wood was stacked on top of his body. We rushed to the pyre and removed the wood on top. His body was wrapped in a blanket. We ripped it open with our fingers. The blanket was rotten so it came apart easily. I immediately recognized my son's body. We saw bullet wounds on the left side of his body with exit wounds on the right. Once I was satisfied, we placed the wood back on top and allowed the pyre to burn. [177]

The police cremated Pargat Singh "Bullet," son of Baldev Singh, on November 5, 1992; the next day the family collected his ashes.

The CBI visited Baldev Singh in the winter of 1996. He told them he wanted justice, but never heard from them again. Baldev Singh later learned that the CBI had refused to list his son as one of those identified as having been cremated by the Punjab police. He was instead identified as another Pargat Singh, a resident of M-village and son of G. Singh. Baldev Singh said he tried to convince the police that he had witnessed his son's cremation, but to no avail. He was instead asked to produce his son.

In November 2006, an inspector from B-Division summoned me to the police station. He asked me to identify my son. I told him that my son was Pargat Singh and that he had been killed in a fake encounter. He started berating me saying that he didn't believe me. He said that Pargat Singh belonged to a family from village M-. He told me that it was impossible for there to be two Pargat Singh's from two different families, both killed in the same encounter, yet only one body. He then demanded that I turn over my son. I told him that he could say whatever he liked, but I saw my son's body with my own eyes. He continued shouting at me, saying there couldn't be two Pargat Singhs. I told him that was for him to explain, not me, but I saw him with my own eyes.

I returned about one week later to determine if they would acknowledge my son. The inspector said that he wouldn't recognize my claim. He would recognize the family from M- village. According to his documentation, they were Pargat Singh's family so he would decide in their favor. There was nothing else I could say, so I left.

The government should tell me what really happened. They should acknowledge my son's death. I saw him with my own eyes. How can they tell me that it wasn't my son?They made my family suffer. Nobody was willing to marry my daughter. I'm not hungry for money, I'm hungry for justice. [178]

The CBI continues to identify the Pargat Singh who was cremated on November 5, 1992, as the son of G. Singh, not Baldev Singh.

The Pargat Singh that the CBI list acknowledges was the son of G.Singh and nicknamed "Mini Bullet." Pargat Singh's brothers told Ensaaf that he was a militant with the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF). The police regularly harassed his family. K. Singh, Pargat Singh's brother, recounted to Ensaaf:

All in all, over the years, I was abducted and tortured 15 to 17 times. Chabal, Bhikiwind, Khalra, Harike were the main police stations involved. My father was abducted five to six times. In 1992, the police detained me continuously for seven months at various police stations, and beat me. When they transferred me between police stations, they would blindfold me, so I didn't know where I was. I was released five to six days after they killed my brother Pargat Singh. [179]

According to the Punjab police, Pargat Singh of M-village was cremated on November 5, 1992, the same day that Baldev Singh witnessed the cremation of his son Pargat Singh. Only one Pargat Singh's cremation is recorded on that day in the cremation ground records.[180] The family of G.Singh read about the cremation at Durgiana Mandir cremation ground in the Ajit newspaper and went to collect the ashes; the cremation ground workers did not give the ashes to them.

As discussed above, in July 1996, the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to investigate the killing of Pargat Singh "Bullet." One of his brothers, K. Singh, described the extent of investigation:

Many years later, the CBI visited our house to ask us about Pargat Singh's death. They came a total of four times. The first two times the CBI came from Patiala. The first two times we were afraid to talk to the CBI and told them that we didn't know anything. Then we spoke with Mrs. Khalra [Jaswant Singh Khalra's widow] and she said that it was okay to speak with them-that they were investigating our case.

The CBI from Amritsar then visited us twice in the same year. We told them about our history of persecution and whatever we knew about Pargat Singh's death. The CBI actually had more information than we did. They told us that the Raja Sansi police had faked the encounter of Pargat Singh. They said that some woman had admitted Pargat Singh to the hospital ten days earlier because of pain in his appendix. Then, on November 4, 1992, Raja Sansi police abducted Pargat Singh from the hospital and then cremated him at Durgiana Mandir the next day. They further said that Sub-Inspector[Name withheld]of Raja Sansi Police was the main accused. [181]

K. Singh described the lack of court proceedings:

In 2001, we received a letter from the CBI Patiala telling us to come to court to give testimony. About ten days later, I went to Patiala to the address indicated on the letter. I went to some government office. There, someone told me to go to an attorney's office. I went to that attorney's office and met a clerk. The clerk told me to return in about a month. I went back a month later to the clerk. The clerk told me that if we wanted to fight our case, we would have to give him 20,000 rupees-5,000 for him and 15,000 for the attorney. I told him that we had no ability to pay that amount and left. After that, the CBI never contacted us again. We have no idea if the CBI ever prosecuted anybody for Pargat Singh's murder. [182]

Baldev Singh continues to dispute which Pargat Singh was killed and cremated on November 5, 1992. The CBI acknowledges the cremation of a Pargat Singh, but still insists he was the son of G. Singh.

The killing of Piyara Singh

In July 1996, the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to register a case regarding the killing of Piyara Singh.[183] Piyara Singh's son Balraj Singh, however, told Ensaaf that the CBI approached the family only twice during its investigation and the family has no knowledge of any criminal prosecution pursued in response to the Supreme Court order.

Balraj Singh said that a police team arrested his father in 1987 and tortured him for five to six days. In 1989, a police force arrested his father at his home and brutally tortured him, using a heavy roller, suspending him, tearing his legs, pulling his nails out of his feet, and impaling his legs with sharp, heated iron rods. In 1990, out of fear of the police, Piyara Singh moved to Uttar Pradesh to live with his sister.

In 1992, Balraj Singh was visiting his father in Uttar Pradesh when the police came to the village disguised as a group of doctors:

They approached my father's neighbors, saying they wanted the presence of a prominent person to inaugurate a hospital. The neighbors mentioned my father, but said that he wasn't home. The police said that they would wait nearby and asked the neighbors to signal them when my father returned.

When my father returned home and entered the house, about 10 to 12 policemen rushed in after him and tackled me and my father. They tied our arms behind our backs and took us away on a mini truck. [184]

The police took Balraj Singh and his father Piyara Singh to the B.R.ModelSchoolInterrogationCenter, and placed them about three cells apart:

They started torturing my father. I could hear his screams into the morning. That night, around 9 p.m., they came for me and tortured me for about an hour. But they tortured my father continuously for three days. I could hear his screams the entire time. After the third day, I could no longer hear him, so I assumed they had tortured him to death. [185]

After his release over two weeks later, Balraj Singh learned that the police reported that his father had been killed in an encounter. He further learned from his family that his grandfather and Jaswant Singh Khalra had gone to Durgiana Mandir cremation ground and spoken with a cremation ground worker. Khalra knew Piyara Singh because they were both bank directors.

According to Balraj Singh, the family did not hear from the CBI again after 1996.

C. The murder of Jaswant Singh Khalra: Intimidation of witnesses and superior responsibility

In the early 1990s, human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra joined the Human Rights Wing of the political party Akali Dal.[186] In 1994, while investigating the disappearance of a personal friend, Khalra discovered that the police had secretly cremated his body at Durgiana Mandir cremation ground in Amritsar district. Khalra launched a wider investigation into secret cremations.[187]

In January 1995, Jaswant Singh Khalra and his colleague Jaspal Singh Dhillon released a report on mass illegal cremations using government records. KPS Gill, the director general of police (DGP) in Punjab, responded to their evidence by accusing Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of trying to destroy peace in Punjab and alleging that most of the "disappeared" persons were living abroad.[188] Khalra discussed DGP Gill's statements in April 1995:

KPS Gill said in a press conference in Amritsar, 'These Human Rights Wing folks-they're not doing anything on human rights. They have one motive, to prop up their agenda, so there is no peace in Punjab. They are ISI agents, and they are hatching a conspiracy to discourage the police machinery and re-incite militancy.' KPS Gill went to the extent of saying, 'I'll tell you where those kids are.' He said, 'These kids are in Europe, in Canada, and in America, where they are earning their daily wages. And these human rights organizations are telling us that thousands of kids have disappeared.' This was a challenge to us. This was a challenge to that truth which we sought to bring forward. [189]

Khalra challenged DGP Gill to an open debate on the evidence.[190] In February 1995, at a press conference, Khalra publicly disclosed the death threats made to him because of his human rights work.[191] He also discussed thes