In the last five and a half years, 4,000 to 5,000 people have been killed by the police or armed forced during arrests or while in detention in Punjab, India’s most prosperous agricultural state, said Ajit Singh Bains, founder chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organization in Chandigarh, the state capital, At least 15,000 young men are in detention without trial, he said.
Mr. Bains, 67, who retired as a judge on the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 1984, was asked by the state government in 1985 to investigate the cases of Sikhs in detention.
“During that period, I came to know how the police were exceeding their duty,” he said in an interview at his home in Chandigarh, a planned “garden city” now marred by bunkers, road blocks and gun emplacements. “I came to know of murders, tortures, extortion,” he said. “There is no rule of law in Punjab.”
Under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, the India Government would not permit international human rights monitors to visit Punjab. When Mr. Bains was asked to speak to a United Nations human rights conference in August, officials refused to renew his passport.
The Punjab Human Rights Organization plans to ask Prime Minister Singh to rescind the ban on outside groups and open the state to investigation.
The new Indian Government is expected to hold a nonpartisan conference on Punjab this week in New Delhi, the start of a new political initiative.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 22, 1989
