LUDHIANA: The International Human Rights Organization, while censuring the Punjab police for keeping in illegal custody and for torturing relatives and acquaintances of alleged militants, urged the state government to release them.
The IHRO general secretary, Mohinder Singh Grewal and administration secretary, Gurbhajan Singh Gill, said here recently that the organization office had received numerous reports that the police and the security forces have been regularly picking up the relatives and acquaintances of the alleged militants and subjecting them to torture.
The human rights activists said that the Chandigarh police had picked up KLF Lt General Dr Pritam Singh Sekhon’s brother in Jaw. Dr Hurjit Singh, in charge of the semeri bank at Nabha on July 3 from Nabha. His family members had written letters to the Punjab governor and the Chief Minister advising them about his abduction, but so far the police have not disclosed his whereabouts.
Similarly, Param Satinderjit Singh, a student of B. Tech at the Guru Nanak Dev University, was picked up by the “cats” of Gurdaspur police and a BSF party from a ready-made garments shop on the Lawrence Road, Amritsar on May 18 and Jatinder Singh, a student of Guru Nanak Engineering College, Ludhiana was picked up from his college in a van with the registration number of PB-087677 on July 23.
Jarnail Singh Mehandipur has been detained for the last one and a half year, Nirmal Singh’s wife and two aged women for more than a month and Dilbag Singh Jawaddi, was picked up by the Patti police.
Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 21, 1992
