The Final Report

The Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP) presents the first volume of its final report: Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab. The massive amount of testimony contained in this report attempts to portray the enormity of atrocities suffered by the people of Punjab during the police counterinsurgency operations and expose the paradox between India's rhetoric of rights and reality of human rights abuses.

This report contains:

* A preface by Peter Rosenblum of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School;
* An Introduction by Tapan Bose;
* An extensive analysis of the historical background of human rights issues in Punjab, as exemplified through the family history of human rights activist and victim of disappearance Jaswant S. Khalra;
* A legal analysis of attempts to obtain redress for victims through the procedures of law, the People's Commission, and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC);
* The development and reorganization of the Punjab police during the counterinsurgency operations, with police testimony on their patterns of abuse;
* A note on CCDP's methodology;
* An analysis of 513 out of 1703 of CCDP's documented cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Punjab, focusing on: the characteristics of the CBI's actual investigation, abuse of police powers, implications of TADA, use of custodial torture, role of Indian armed forces, violations of property rights, complicity of the lower judiciary, and medical issues; and
* Summaries of 513 testimonies, implicating 672 cases of disappearances.

The website contains electronic copies of the report, a database, video interviews, and documents further supplementing the collection of materials in the report. We hope the reader will focus on the facts, comparing this massive testimony against official stories, denials and unwillingness to address the problems of the violation of fundamental human rights.

BACKGROUND*

Roots of insurgency and police crackdown

Punjab is a northern state in India, bordering Pakistan. During the partition of India in 1947, Punjab was split between the two countries. In India, Punjab was subsequently further truncated by creating two more states out of it. The Sikhs, a religious minority, now form the majority in Punjab. They comprise approximately two percent of India's population.

The 1980s in Punjab experienced a decade-long insurgency aiming at reworking the Center-State relationship to procure greater autonomy for Punjab. The insurgency arose from decades of grievances and civil disobedience in Punjab around the issues of water rights, cultural rights, local control over agricultural production and prices, territorial loss and redress for human rights abuses.

In 1984, the central government began its active, large scale armed oppression of Sikhs and a violent police crackdown of the Sikh insurgency. On June 3, 1984, the martyrdom anniversary of the fifth Sikh Guru, the Indian army launched Operation Bluestar. The army invaded the Golden Temple complex, the center of Sikh religious and political life, and forty-one other major Sikh gurudwaras in Punjab with tanks and other heavy armor, and imposed a statewide curfew. The government forbade news coverage of the army attacks, expelled foreign journalists, and cut phone lines across Punjab. Eyewitnesses reported that over 10,000 pilgrims and 1300 workers had gathered inside the complex and could not leave before the attack for fear of arrest. The police detained Red Cross volunteers at Jallianwala Bagh, near the Golden Temple complex, preventing them from accessing the pilgrims and workers. Eyewitnesses cited figures ranging from 4000 to 8000 people killed, mostly pilgrims.

Operation Bluestar alienated the Sikh population, casting the Indian government as a regime oppressive toward Sikhs. On October 31, 1984, two of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in retaliation for Operation Bluestar. After the assassination, local political officials orchestrated pogroms against Sikhs in New Delhi and other cities across India, killing at least 3000 people, and burning Sikh houses and businesses. Eyewitnesses and relief workers identified political party leaders in Delhi who had led mobs and encouraged them to violence.

The decade-long police crackdown of the insurgency after Operation Bluestar led to the deaths of at least 40,000 people in Punjab. CCDP has collected 1703 testimonies and it estimates that these testimonies represent only ten percent of the victim population. Human Rights Watch (HRW) describes Operation Rakshak II, the police counter-insurgency movement, as "the most extreme example of a policy in which the end appeared to justify any and all means, including torture and murder."

Draconian Legislation and Police Abuses

As part of its counter-insurgency operation, the Indian government passed several draconian laws that sanctioned police impunity. The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) of 1987 established in camera courts and authorized detention of persons in a "disturbed area" based on mere suspicion. Under Section 21, detainees were presumed guilty until proven innocent; Section 20(8) prohibited bail even if the detainee had not been charged after ninety days. Between 1985 and 1995, the police registered 17,529 TADA cases in Punjab; only a few were eventually convicted.

The Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act of 1983 empowered security forces to search premises and arrest people without warrant. Section 4 gave them the power to shoot to kill a suspected terrorist, with prosecutorial immunity granted in Section 7. Amnesty International described this act as emboldening security forces with a "license to torture and kill with impunity."

The National Security Act of 1980, amended in 1984 and 1987, authorized detention of suspected terrorists without trial for two years in Punjab. In 1988, the Parliament dissolved the Punjab State Assembly and passed the Fifty-ninth Amendment to the Indian Constitution, authorizing the extension of President's rule beyond one year, and suspending due process guarantees for rights relating to life and liberty and to freedom of speech and association in Punjab. This amendment also suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Although the amendment was repealed in 1989, the Parliament again extended President's rule in Punjab in March 1990.

Evidence of Illegal Mass Cremations

In 1994, in response to reports of mass disappearances orchestrated by the police, Jaswant S. Khalra, Chairman of the Human Rights Wing of the Akali Dal, and Jaspal S. Dhillon, then General Secretary of the Wing, investigated illegal cremations conducted by the Punjab Police between 1984 and 1994 in three crematoria in Amritsar district. They focused their research on illegal cremations, putting aside other possible ends of the victims' bodies, such as dismemberment, entombment, or dumping in canals. They also limited their research to only one of the seventeen districts in Punjab. Within this limited focus, they discovered over 2000 illegal cremations.

A few months after Khalra and Dhillon publicized their findings, Khalra filed a writ petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to investigate these mass cremations. The High Court dismissed his petition on grounds of vagueness, and Khalra moved the Supreme Court. While the case was pending before the Supreme Court, the police abducted Khalra from outside of his house. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's investigative agency, ultimately charged nine police officers for his abduction, and the case against these police officers is now proceeding in the Patiala CBI Court. The Supreme Court also ordered the NHRC to investigate these mass cremations and determine relevant issues, such as compensation.

This report represents six years of efforts centered around documenting disappearances and pursuing the matter before the NHRC. In these six years, the NHRC has yet to begin to investigate any victim complaints. Please see Legal Battles for information on the NHRC case.

For a detailed history of Punjab and the recent history leading up to the human rights violations, please read Chapter One of the report.

*based on "A Judicial Blackout: Judicial Impunity for Disappearances in Punjab, India", Jaskaran Kaur, Harvard Human Rights Journal

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