Summary of Order Convicting Six Punjab Policemen in Khalra’s Abduction and Murder

Thirty years ago, India’s security forces brutally murdered human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra for exposing over 2,000 secret cremations of the disappeared in Punjab.

This report analyzes reported fatal violence across Punjab during a period of conflict from 1984 to 1995. This preliminary, descriptive statistical analysis by Ensaaf and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) at Benetech uses systematic and verifiable quantitative research to interrogate the Indian government's portrayal of the Punjab counterinsurgency as a successful campaign with isolated human rights violations.

The report by Ensaaf and HRDAG, “Violent Deaths and Enforced Disappearances During the Counterinsurgency in Punjab, India,” presents empirical findings suggesting that the intensification of counterinsurgency operations in Punjab in the early 1990s was accompanied by a shift in state violence from targeted lethal human rights violations to systematic enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions, accompanied by mass “illegal cremations.” Indian security officials have dismissed claims of human rights violations as unavoidable “aberrations” during the counterinsurgency against alleged terrorists in Punjab from 1984 to 1995.