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Above video delves into the harrowing story of human rights abuses in Punjab, India, during the 1980s and 1990s. It centers on the courageous efforts of Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra, who uncovered evidence of mass disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the region. Through archival footage, interviews and expert analysis, this video exposes the systemic violations committed by Indian authorities and highlights Bhai Khalra’s work and methodology which ultimately led to his own disappearance.

In 1995, the Punjab Police abducted, tortured, and murdered human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra for his work in uncovering thousands of disappearances, unlawful killings, and secret cremations of Sikhs perpetrated by the Punjab Police. It took ten years to bring Khalra’s murder to trial, but in 2005, Ensaaf worked alongside private attorneys to bring some of the perpetrators to justice. Six police officials were convicted.
In 2007, the Punjab & Haryana High Court upheld five convictions, enhancing all sentences to life imprisonment. The sixth official was acquitted. In November 2011, India’s Supreme Court upheld the convictions and sentences.
In May 2006, Ensaaf partnered with Human Rights Watch (HRW), REDRESS, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice to issue a call to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for the investigation and prosecution of former police chief KPS Gill for his role in Khalra's torture and murder. In addition, Ensaaf assisted Paramjit Kaur, Khalra's widow, in drafting the international law arguments on superior responsibility in a petition that called on the High Court to investigate and prosecute Gill for his role in the crimes committed against Khalra. The petition was filed on September 6, 2006.
In Fall 2007, Ensaaf and HRW released a video-enhanced joint report, Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India. Among other abuses, the report discusses Khalra's murder trial and how it illustrates the many roadblocks that families of victims continue to face in pursuing legal remedies against perpetrators.
Over twenty years after Khalra's death, the Indian government is no closer to holding senior police officers accountable for organizing his – and thousands of other Sikhs' – death. KPS Gill died in 2017 without facing trial.

• Genuine encounters;
  
• Victims killed by militants;
  
• Disappearances with no appearance of state action;
  
• Families who expressed hesitation or fear of retribution; and
  
• Families who expressed fear over the withdrawal of government benefits.
  

For three decades, the architects of crimes against humanity in Punjab have escaped accountability and justice. While families have searched for their disappeared loved ones and lived with lies and partial-truths, the government of India has rewarded and promoted the perpetrators. We believe that survivors of gross human rights violations cannot live as free and respected citizens of a country until impunity ends.
During the 1980s and 1990s, India’s security forces engaged in widespread and systematic human rights violations in the state of Punjab, as part of counterinsurgency operations aimed at crushing a violent self-determination movement. Special counterinsurgency laws, and a system of rewards and incentives for security forces, led to an increase in enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions of civilians and militants alike. By the end of the “Decade of Disappearances” in 1995, security forces had disappeared or extrajudicially executed thousands of Sikhs. To conceal their crimes, security forces killed human rights defenders such as Jaswant Singh Khalra and Sukhwinder Singh Bhatti, as well as destroyed their victims’ bodies through mass cremations or by dumping them in rivers.
Hundreds of perpetrators remain unaccountable. Further, the architects of these crimes remain in positions of power, and have traveled to other regions of India to advise on counterinsurgency operations. As demonstrated in Ensaaf’s joint report with Human Rights Watch, Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India (Oct. 2007), India’s institutions have failed to acknowledge the systematic and widespread nature of the abuses, and accordingly have not provided truth, justice, and reparations to the victims and survivors.
Prior to this project by Ensaaf, no government institution or civil society organization had documented the full-scale of enforced disappearances or extrajudicial executions during the Punjab counterinsurgency.
In the full-scale data collection phase, Ensaaf used the official 2001 census of Punjab, India, with census codes for each village, town, or city, to identify over 12,000 villages and urban areas. Field researchers approached each village and identified victim families by canvasing the village, relying on several consistently present sources of information in each village: past and current village heads (Sarpanch), past and present village council members, the births and deaths registrar (Chownkidar), and groups of village elders (Bazurg) that typically gather in public sitting areas. After all of these referral sources were consulted and consensus was reached on the identity of the victim families present in the village, Ensaaf field researchers then interviewed the identified families using both a standardized survey instrument built as a database, plus a free text form, allowing them to collect both quantitative and qualitative data on each incident. Field researchers further solicited information on other affected families in the village from those they interviewed, acting as yet another corroborating referral source.
Ensaaf subjected each case to data consistency checks, and further clarified details with families over the phone or through subsequent visits. Because over two decades had passed, and evidence had been withheld or destroyed by security forces, families shared their experiences to the best of their abilities. Often, on subsequent returns, Ensaaf found that the original respondents had deceased because of the age of elderly parents. We also identified villages that did not exist on the Indian census.