Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab
Final Report: Volume One
Ram Narayan Kumar with Amrik Singh, Ashok Agrwaal, and Jaskaran Kaur
Download the entire report:
Complete Report (5 MB pdf)
Or download in parts:
Cover (60 KB pdf)
Title Page (144 KB pdf)
Table of Contents (56 KB pdf)
Introduction (168 KB pdf)
Chapter 1 (296 KB)
Chapter 2 (292 KB)
Chapter 3 (88 KB)
Chapter 4 (192 KB)
Chapter 5 (3.1 MB)
Endnote & Appendices (564 KB)
Read the statement by Human Rights Watch calling on the National Human Rights Commission to fulfill its mandate to investigate forced disappearances in Punjab and commending Reduced to Ashes.
Press Release
May 23, 2003
New Report Documents Disappearances, Extrajudicial Executions
and Mass Illegal Cremations by Police in Punjab, India
“The careful analysis by the authors allows the reader to "pierce through the thick veils of ideology, intrigue and ‘state security’ that obscure our understanding of the campaign to pacify Punjab.” — Professor Peter Rosenblum. (Cambridge, MA, May 23, 2003) The Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP) has released the first volume of its Final Report, titled Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab. This 634-page volume contains extensive documentation and analysis of hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killing of victims by the security forces in Punjab during the political unrest of the 1980s and early 1990s. Included in this first volume—authored by R.N. Kumar with Amrik Singh, Ashok Agrwaal and Jaskaran Kaur—are more than 500 testimonies by the families of the victims describing 672 cases of extrajudicial executions by the police in the district of Amritsar alone.
More than a hundred people attended the release event in New Delhi on May 23rd. The first volume of the Final Report was released by Mr. Patwant Singh. Many human rights activists, community organizers, media correspondents and people from other spheres were present, including the former Law minister of India, Mr. Shanti Bhushan.
The Final Report builds upon the work of the late Mr. Jaswant Singh Khalra, a lawyer and human rights activist who was himself abducted and "disappeared" by Punjab Police in September 1995 for his pursuit of justice and human rights. Mr. Khalra had discovered, from the records of three cremation grounds in Amritsar district, cases of mass illegal cremations by police over many years. As Peter Rosenblum of the Harvard Law School notes in his preface to this volume, the careful analysis by the authors allows the reader to "pierce through the thick veils of ideology, intrigue and 'state security' that obscure our understanding of the campaign to pacify Punjab."
The CCDP has been investigating and documenting the systematic and large-scale abuse of basic human rights by police in Punjab since its formation in November 1997.
