|
|
12th October, 2006
Voices For Freedom is contemplating petitioning the Supreme Court of India to ask the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to widen the scope of the Punjab Mass Cremations case and include districts other than Amritsar.
The recent National Human Rights Commission's decision in this case to appoint a Commissioner, a retired Punjab and Haryana High Court Judge, K. S. Bhalla, to verify the identity of the remaining 814 bodies of a total of 2,097 that were killed and secretly cremated by the police between 1984 to 1994 in the district of Amritsar in Punjab without following lawful procedures, leaves the task incomplete feels Voices For Freedom. The NHRC had, in this interminable case, taken the stand that it can only limit itself to the cases of those disappeared in the district of Amritsar, as submitted in the initial petition in the Supreme Court.
Voices For Freedom expresses dissatisfaction at the pace and the handling of the case.
The case was handed over to the Commission by the Supreme Court of India after a writ petition was filed by the widow of slain Jaswant Singh Khalra. Her petition was based on the Human Rights activist Mr Khalra's report of extra-judicial killings and illegal cremations of more than 2000 bodies in the district of Amritsar alone. He was "killed" by the police before he could complete the list from the remaining districts of Punjab. Further, the NHRC decided that monetary compensation "is appropriate and indeed an effective and sometimes perhaps the only suitable remedy for redressal of the established infringement of the fundamental right of life of a citizen by the public servants, and the State is vicariously liable for their acts."
According to Voices For Freedom the decisions of the Commission are a clear indication and an admission by the Government of India that illegal killings had indeed taken place in the state of Punjab between the periods of 1984 to 1994. However, very serious issues remain to be resolved in these decisions. The most striking feature of this case has been the CBI's snail paced investigation into the criminal activities of the police during this period. According to Sudip Minhas executive Director, Voices For Freedom "The Government and the courts need to be more pro-active on such issues just as they have been in the Parliament attack case and the Indira Gandhi assassination trial. If the suspects in these cases," she said "can be given exemplary punishment, then those protecting the law need to be dealt with even more firmly especially if they have committed what can be easily termed as crimes against humanity."
Voices For Freedom therefore requests the government of India that:
- The police officials and the people responsible for the extra-judicial killings be prosecuted and those found guilty of such heinous crimes be given "exemplary" punishment.
- The reference of the National Human Rights Commission be expanded to include all the districts of Punjab and other places where such disappearances have taken place.
- The Supreme Court to issue a directive to the Government and its agencies to expedite the matter of inquiring into the process of such gross Human Rights abuses.
Voices For Freedom believes that the longer it is taking the guilty to be punished the more alienated the victims feel and this delay of justice is adding insult to an already heinous injury.
|
|
|
|
|
