NEW DELHI: At least 3,000 people have disappeared from Punjab’s Amritsar district between 1992 and 1994 and their bodies have been cremated by police as unidentified or unclaimed, a human rights group has alleged.
This was the period when Punjab police, led by present chief K.P.S. Gill, undertook a vigorous campaign to stamp out the Sikh militants, said the “Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab.”
Last week, the group moved the Supreme Court, which has asked Gill to explain what happened to the missing people. The committee is seeking appropriate inquiry and action against those responsible for these crimes.
Amritsar was a hotbed of militants, who held sway in the countryside till the Punjab police, central forces and the Army established the authority of the state.
Committee spokespersons Nitya Ramakrishnan, Tapan Bose, Ram Narayan Kumar and Ashok Agarwal said the case of the missing people was borne out by official records, birth and death registers, municipal corporation cremation records and the firewood purchase registers maintained at the cremation grounds.
“The name and addresses of at least some cremated thus, ironically enough, are given in the records. These correspond with persons alleged to have been abducted by Punjab’s security forces. Further probe on these connections establish that the Punjab police have been systematically picking up people, eliminating them and disposing of their bodies without even advising their relatives,” they said.
That the conduct of the Punjab police is malaise and willful is further evident from the fact that they have violated the elementary procedures required to be observed under the law to notify persons and authorities and to make detailed descriptions before dealing with dead bodies that are stated to be unidentified, they alleged.
Committee members said they also wished to draw attention to the “retaliatory tactics” of the Punjab police against human rights’ activists. who have investigated and sought to expose their misdeeds in this regard. “One example is the case of Jaswant Singh Khalra, general secretary of the Shiromani Akali Dal’s human rights wing, who has been closely associated with investigations leading to the discovery of these crimes,” they said.
According to Ramakrishnan, Khalra was picked up on September 6 in the morning by uniformed Punjab police commandos. Eyewitness ac- counts of Khalra’s abduction, and also independent information the committee got from reliable sources, confirm that he was held illegally and under torture by Taran Taran police, who had abducted him, until September 22. That night he was moved out of Sarhali in Tarn Taran and taken to an unknown destination.
“The authorities do not have neither formally acknowledged Khalra’s abduction, nor have his relatives received authentic information on his whereabouts. We are raising two issues – regarding the connection between the disappearance of a large number of people and the police cremations of supposedly unidentified bodies, and the attempts of police to silence human rights workers,” the members said.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 20, 1995
