This summer, Ensaaf interviewed over 1,000 individuals - including hundreds of survivors - to capture stories of disappearances, unlawful killings, and torture in Amritsar during the Punjab counterinsurgency.
This ambitious achievement, which represents the largest deployment of human rights investigators in Punjab in over a decade, was only realized due to the financial support we received from supporters like you. As a small token of our thanks, we created a short video tribute to show our immense gratitude for the generosity and trust given to us by our donors.
In June 1984, the Indian Army attacked Harmandir Sahib, popularly known as the Golden Temple, as well as 41 other gurudwaras (Sikh places of worship) throughout Punjab. The assault, codenamed “Operation Blue Star,” marked the beginning of a policy of gross human rights violations in Punjab that continues to have profound implications for the rule of law in India.
This brief photo essay includes photos from the assault itself, the Tribune (Chandigarh) and the BBC. The essay draws on information from the BBC and Chapter 1 of Ensaaf’s report Twenty Years of Impunity.
This report uses quantitative methods to scientifically demonstrate the implausibility that these lethal human rights violations are random or minor aberrations as suggested by Indian officials.
The podcast briefly explains the context of the report and discusses our preliminary findings.
Ensaaf and the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group released a photo essay in accompaniment to their joint report, Violent Deaths and Enforced Disappearances During the Counterinsurgency in Punjab, India. This report uses quantitative methods to scientifically demonstrate the implausibility that these lethal human rights violations are random or minor aberrations as suggested by Indian officials.
This video includes testimony about how the Punjab police detained and beat an unarmed Sikh youth, pulled his hair and chased him as he begged for his life, and then shot him at point blank range on July 8, 1990 in Mohali, Punjab. Eyewitnesses describe how the police staged the body, placed a gun in the victim’s hand, acknowledged the innocence of the boy to survivors and Member of Parliament Bimal Kaur Khalsa, but then gave a false statement to the press that the victim was a criminal. The footage was shot in 1990 by Baljit Kaur of the Movement Against State Repression.
In an SBS Dateline program on Punjab, Geoff Parish challenges former police chief KPS Gill about the secret cremations documented to have occurred when he was police chief of Punjab. The secret cremations have been confirmed in the Punjab mass cremations case proceeding before India’s National Human Rights Commission. (Apr. 2002, Uploaded with permission from SBS.)
Tarlochan Singh describes his son Kulwinder Singh’s abduction by the Punjab police, and his 18-year continuing legal struggle for justice for Kulwinder Singh’s extrajudicial execution. (Oct. 2007)
Rajvinder S. Bains, a human rights attorney in the Punjab & Haryana High Court for over 20 years, discusses his experiences with the High Court in cases filed on behalf of victims of disappearances or extrajudicial executions. (Oct. 2007)
Ensaaf and the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group released a 
