National Human Rights Commission
The Matter of Police Abductions leading to Illegal Cremations

In January 1995, Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon filed a writ petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to impel it to investigate their discovery of mass illegal cremations in three crematoria in Amritsar district-one out of 17 districts in Punjab. The High Court dismissed the petition on grounds of vagueness, and they moved the Supreme Court. Before the Supreme Court could hear the matter, armed commandos of the Punjab Police abducted Khalra on September 6, 1995, from outside of his house. The Committee for Information and Initiative in Punjab (CCIP) moved the Supreme Court of India to demand a comprehensive inquiry.

In December 1996, the Supreme Court referred the matter of police abductions leading to disappearances and secret cremations in Punjab to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) as Reference Case No. 1 of 1997, observing that the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) report disclosed "flagrant violations of human rights on a mass scale". The December 1996 report by the CBI showed 2098 illegal cremations at three cremation grounds of Amritsar district. Of these, the CBI identified 582, partially identified 278 and failed to identify 1238.

On August 4, 1997, the NHRC declared that in this case it was vested with all the powers of the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution. The NHRC also indicated that it intended to look into cases of disappearance from all over Punjab. The Government of India challenged this decision of the NHRC before the Supreme Court, which upheld the NHRC's decision in September 1998.

Subsequently, however, the Commission itself limited its mandate. In its January 13, 1999 order, the NHRC placed a territorial restriction on its investigation, narrowing its mandate to the three crematoria in Amritsar district. Also, the Commission limited its study to cremations, ignoring the starting point of enforced disappearances. The NHRC decided to only entertain claims of people who could swear on oath that their kin had been cremated at one of the three cremation grounds. CIIP appealed, but the Supreme Court declined to clarify the mandate of the NHRC. Amnesty International criticized the NHRC for proposing "the minimal role that it could play in response to those directions."

After four years of debating these preliminary issues and deciding to restrict the inquiry, the NHRC collected claims and offered limited redress to eighteen families. In its August 18, 2000 order, the NHRC agreed to the Punjab government's proposal to offer compensation of 100,000 rupees (around $2000) with no admission of wrongdoing or prosecution of officials. The order admitted that the Punjab government had "neither conducted any detailed examination in these cases on merits nor [did] it admit[ ] its liability." The order concluded: "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." With its dismissal of liability and illegal detention, the Commission flouted the rights to life and redress, enshrined in the Indian Constitution and international law.

The eighteen families unanimously rejected the government's offer and moved the NHRC to expand the inquiry into enforced disappearances in all of Punjab. Six years after it received this case, the NHRC agreed to investigate illegal cremations in Amritsar district, but held fast to its decision not to expand the inquiry beyond Amritsar or to disappearances in general. However, the NHRC still has not begun to investigate personal claims. In September 2002, the NHRC, holding that the State of Punjab is liable to rebut the presumption of guilt against it, directed it to file replies in each of the 582 cases of "identified" cremations, based on the CBI investigations. The State, however, has hardly begun its process.

Our experiences of participation in the proceedings before the NHRC, over the last six years, have completely belied our initial hopes. Our investigations reveal the failure of the CBI to properly or seriously investigate the matter of illegal cremations and their complicity in this conspiracy of impunity. Based on our findings, as well as the NHRC's own admission that the CBI's records do not provide necessary information, the NHRC must now work to develop alternate mechanisms for considering victims' claims of abuse. With this report, we provide the NHRC with detailed summaries of 672 of the cases that figure in the CBI lists. We hope that the Commission will use our case studies to involve the victim families directly in its proceedings and use their testimony to fulfill the mandate it has received from the Supreme Court.

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