AMRITSAR: The Human Rights Wing of the Shiromani Akali Dal last week claimed that the bodies of more than 25,000 Sikhs, who were eliminated by the Punjab Police on the pretest of being militants or their sympathizers, were cremated at crematoriums throughout the state by the cops themselves. In a statement here, the Human Rights Organization’s General Secretary Jaswant Singh Khalra said in Amritsar district alone 6017 ‘unclaimed bodies’ were cremated by the Cops. Out of this 1135 were cremated at the Jain Sabha cremation grounds at the sub divisional town of Patti, 1915 at Tan Taran town and another 2000 odd at the cremation grounds in Amritsar city, the statement said while records of these unlawful cremations existed these were not being made public.
The statement regretted that none of the political parties or the judicial courts had intervened to question the right of the Punjab Police to cremate the bodies in such fashion. The statement called upon the Akali Dal chief Parkash Singh Badal to take up this issue with other political parties.
The four page statement signed by Khalra further claimed that a total of 17,634 Sikhs were detained under TADA and more than 40,000 tortured inhumanly during the past couple of years. A number of those who were detained under TADA were later released by the courts, the statement said while urging those who had been released to file compensation cases against the government. The statement alleged that those who had filed public interests litigation (PIL) petitions against the Punjab Police were being harassed by police officers and were being pressurized and bribed for withdrawing these. The statement urged the courts to expedite all pending PIL petitions.
The statement also criticized Chief Minister Beant Singh’s statement that the government would protect those police officers who were being hauled up by the judicial courts.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 4, 1995
