Protecting the Killers - A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India

Gurbachan Singh holds pictures of his sons, Rashpal Singh and Charrat Singh, who were allegedly killed by Indian security forces. A decade later, he still waits to learn the truth of his sons’ deaths and to see those responsible brought to justice. © Ensaaf/2007

Bhagwant Kaur sits with her daughter, and holds a picture of her “disappeared” husband Ajmer Singh. From 1984 to 1995, the Indian government authorized its security forces to illegally detain, torture, extrajudicially execute, and “disappear” tens of thousands of Sikhs. © Ensaaf/2007

Ajit Singh, himself a victim of torture, holds a picture of his son who was allegedly tortured and extrajudicially executed by the police. © Ensaaf/2007

The police allegedly killed Charanjit Kaur in late 1995, and also tortured her young son, because her husband had become a militant. While Sikh militants were responsible for numerous human rights abuses, Indian security forces illegally targeted family members of militants for abuse, including “disappearances,” extrajudicial executions, and torture.

In over 10 years of proceedings to provide redress to victims of police killings and secret cremations, the National Human Rights Commission has refused to allow a single victim family to testify. These women, whose family members were allegedly “disappeared” or extrajudicially executed by the Punjab police, regularly attended hearings of the Commission in Amritsar in the vain hope they would be allowed to testify. © Ensaaf/2007

During their counterinsurgency operations, the Punjab police abducted thousands of young Sikh men on suspicion that they were involved in the militancy. Most of the victims of such enforced disappearances are believed to have been killed. To hide the evidence of their crimes, security forces secretly cremated bodies, dumped them into canals, or dismembered and dispersed their victims. In the Punjab mass cremations case, India’s National Human Rights Commission has refused to investigate fundamental rights violations and shielded perpetrators from accountability, destroying the hopes of thousands of victim families. © Ensaaf/2007

In 2000, familes of 18 victims rejected cash compensation proposed by the National Human Rights Commission for the “disappearance” or extrajudicial execution of their loved ones, with no investigation or admission of liability. Dara Singh, one of those who rejected the compensation, holds pictures of both of his sons who were allegedly killed by the police. He says compensation is not enough. He wants those responsible for the death of his sons to be brought to justice. © Ensaaf/2007

Six members of the Punjab police were convicted for the abduction and murder of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra in October 1995. He was threatened and eventually killed after he unearthed government records demonstrating that the Punjab police had secretly cremated thousands of victims of extrajudicial executions. Here Khalra gives a speech in Canada on his findings of mass secret cremations. © Paramjit Kaur Khalra

A recent study by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Bellevue/NYU Medical Center Program for Survivors of Torture revealed that family members of the “disappeared” were also tortured in over half of the cases they investigated. Here is a picture of a hand-cranked generator used to administer electric shocks to detainees held in custody of the Punjab Police. © Ensaaf/2005

Mohinder Singh has been pursuing justice for over a decade. Here, he stands outside the office of the Central Bureau of Investigation, which he says has denied him justice. The Indian government has consistently minimized the scope of state crimes in Punjab and appears to be hoping it can wait out demands for accountability by refusing investigations and acquiescing in manifestly deficient court processes, commissions, and procedures, with no end in sight for survivors. © Mohinder Singh