India: Justice Eludes Families of the "Disappeared" in Punjab
National Human Rights Commission Should Investigate

(New York, June 10, 2003)-India's National Human Rights
Commission must fulfill its mandate to investigate forced
disappearances in Punjab, Human Rights Watch said. .

Six years ago, the Indian Supreme Court directed the
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to investigate 2,097
cases of illegal cremation in Punjab's Amritsar district.
The NHRC has yet to hear testimony in a single case.

Human Rights Watch commended the Committee for Coordination
of Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP), a Punjab-based human
rights organization, for its 634-page report documenting 672
of the "disappearance" cases currently pending before the
NHRC. The first volume of the report, titled Reduced to
Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab, is based
on six years of research and was released in the United
States on Wednesday.

"Ending state impunity for abuses in Punjab must become a
priority," said Smita Narula, senior researcher for South
Asia at Human Rights Watch. "The National Human Rights
Commission has shown great courage and leadership with its
work on the 2002 massacres in Gujarat. We hope it will do
the same in Punjab."

The CCDP's report builds on the work of Jaswant Singh
Khalra, a lawyer and human rights activist who was abducted
and "disappeared" in September 1995. Mr. Khalra filed the
initial public interest petition that eventually led the
Indian Supreme Court to order an NHRC investigation of the
2,097 illegal cremations.

"Thousands of family members still await justice," said
Narula. "The CCDP report demonstrates that investigations
into the abuses is possible, if the political will exists to
hold the perpetrators responsible."

Between 1984 and 1994, thousands of persons "disappeared"
and were believed illegally cremated in Punjab as part of a
brutal police crackdown to quash insurgency in the state.
Police counter-insurgency efforts included torture, forced
disappearances, and a bounty system of cash rewards for the
summary execution of suspected Sikh militants. The campaign
succeeded in eliminating most of the major militant groups,
and by early 1993, the government claimed that normalcy had
returned to the state. Police abuses continued, however, and
there was no effort to account for hundreds of forced
disappearances and summary killings. Even though the
identity of the perpetrators is well documented, no one has
been successfully prosecuted by the state.

The CCDP report can be found at www.punjabjustice.org