No Stone Unturned:

October 5, 2005

Punjab Police: Fabricating Terrorism Through Illegal Detention and Torture

(San Francisco, CA, October 5, 2005) Ensaaf today released its report, Punjab Police: Fabricating Terrorism through Illegal Detention and Torture (June 2005 to August 2005). This report details human rights violations committed by Indian security forces in recent militancy-related arrests. From June 2005 to August 2005, Indian police claim to have arrested several dozen individuals intent on reviving or supporting militancy in Punjab. These arrests center around the apprehension of Jagtar Singh Hawara, the main accused in the 1995 assassination of Punjab's chief minister.

Indian security forces routinely resorted to illegal and incommunicado detention. Further, the Punjab police frequently tortured the detainees.

In August and September 2005, Ensaaf documented 28 cases of detention of Punjabis accused of militancy-related activities. Its study reveals that, in contravention of international and domestic laws, Indian security forces routinely resorted to illegal and incommunicado detention. Further, the Punjab police frequently tortured the detainees. Torture methods included electric shocks, tearing the legs apart at the waist and causing pelvic and muscle injury, and pulling out the hair and beard of the detainees, among other techniques. The police also threatened and detained immediate family members of the targeted individual.

“The majority of detainees whose experiences are discussed in this report remain in the custody of Indian security forces and continue to be at risk of illegal detention and torture, among other custodial abuses,” said Ensaaf's Executive Director, Jaskaran Kaur. “Government officials have not publicly acknowledged, investigated, or redressed the violations,” she said.

The Indian police have constructed and presented elaborate stories of thwarted militant crimes, recovered weapons, captured human bombs, and the discovery of an international network to revive militancy in Punjab. These stories have concealed the escalation in human rights abuses committed in the name of national security and indicate that police fabricated evidence to support criminal charges. Because of conflicting reports between the government and families of detainees regarding dates and circumstances of arrest and detention, these cases should be investigated immediately by an impartial body.

• What impact do these findings have in the Punjab context? Why did you undertake this study?
• How will this report help clarify the historical record?
• How would this report help bring the perpetrators to justice?
• Haven't Punjab Police and government bodies already documented the number of people killed and "illegally cremated?" Why doesn't this suffice?
• If there is so much data available, why can't you make claims about the number of people killed by security forces during the Punjab counterinsurgency campaign?
• What are the future prospects for this work on the Punjab counterinsurgency?
• Will this analysis help locate the disappeared or reveal their stories?
• Do the families of the killed and disappeared support this analysis?
• What has been the impact of quantitative studies of human rights violations in other regions?

What impact do these findings have in the Punjab context? Why did you undertake this study?

We undertook this analysis in order to use systematic and verifiable quantitative research to clarify the historical record and reduce the deniability of the perpetrators, allowing for institutional responsibility. To date, this study is the most comprehensive, quantitative analysis of lethal violence during the counterinsurgency in Punjab. It brings together over 21,000 records compiled by the National Human Rights Commission, the Tribune newspaper, official state records, and local human rights organizations and initiatives. The available data have been analyzed using reproducible scientific methods and increase our understanding of "who did what to whom?," "where?," and "when?." The findings of this report interrogate the plausibility of the state's explanation and justification for mass cremations and "encounters," with alleged militants, as well as their claim that human rights violations were isolated incidents during the counterinsurgency. By using quantitative methods, this report demonstrates the implausibility of lethal human rights violations being "random" or "minor aberrations" as claimed by Indian officials. The findings further indicate that the intensification of coordinated counterinsurgency operations in the early 1990s was accompanied by a shift in state violence from targeted enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions to large-scale and systematic lethal human rights violations, accompanied by mass "illegal cremations." Further, the report lays the foundation for additional research into specific areas of what happened during the conflict, who was disappeared and extrajudicially executed, and who is responsible for the violations that occurred.

How will this report help clarify the historical record?

To date, state authorities in India have dismissed allegations concerning human rights violations during the counterinsurgency as "minor aberrations" and "random" events. This report brings together all of the currently available empirical evidence and shows that enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions by the state were neither "minor aberrations" nor "random" events. Rather, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions were committed on a large scale in Amritsar district and there is evidence showing that these acts spread to the other districts of Punjab as the state's counterinsurgency operations intensified. Further, the pattern of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions is systematic and not consistent with the hypothesis that these were purely random events.

This report brings new evidence to light contradicting the state's position that its policies and practices did not result in large-scale human rights violations. This report also complements existing legal and qualitative analyses on human rights violations in Punjab during the counterinsurgency and increases the quality and quantity of evidence available to the National Human Rights Commission and Supreme Court of India. This analysis clarifies the facts surrounding historical events that can help hold perpetrators accountable and develop appropriate institutional reforms of the security sector to ensure that these violations do not recur.

How would this report help bring the perpetrators to justice?

This report, and future analyses which may arise out of this analysis, aim to introduce new evidence that the Supreme Court of India and National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) can use in their proceedings on justice and accountability for mass human rights violations in Punjab during the counterinsurgency. For example, in this preliminary analysis we have empirically demonstrated that security forces disappeared, extrajudicially executed, and secretly cremated individuals outside of Amritsar district. Amritsar has been the only district under review by the NHRC in the Punjab Mass Cremations case, but this analysis provides an additional basis for the NHRC and the Supreme Court to expand the review. By combining large-scale, empirical data and reproducible, scientific research methods, this work narrows the uncertainty around what happened during the conflict and reduces the scope for deniability by perpetrators.

Haven't Punjab Police and government bodies already documented the number of people killed and "illegally cremated?" Why doesn't this suffice?

No institution or organization has documented the full-scale of lethal violence or "illegal cremations" that occurred during the Punjab counterinsurgency. Further, several issues undermine the credibility of estimates provided by government and security forces.

First, quantitative analyses support qualitative findings that the Punjab Police extrajudicially executed innocent individuals and reported their deaths as encounter killings. Punjab Police released press reports almost daily to local newspapers, detailing the civilians, security forces, and alleged militants killed. Alleged militants were most often reported killed in encounters involving an exchange of gunfire. However, human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases in Punjab where victims were arrested, abducted, or executed by security forces in the presence of witnesses – but then would be reported a few days later as a "suspected militant," killed in an "encounter" with security forces. These reports suggest that many such reported encounters were falsified. So-called "fake encounters," in fact, were so prevalent that the practice has been remarked upon by the U.S. State Department and widely acknowledged in the media. Empirical findings from our report are also consistent with qualitative findings that reported encounters were often faked.Second, the state of Punjab has admitted to forging the identities of over 300 victims of "illegal cremations" in order to protect police collaborators. In February 2006, then-Director General of Punjab Police S.S. Virk admitted that the Punjab Police faked the deaths of over 300 accused militants-turned-police-informers who were then given new identities. Virk's confession asserted that 300 unidentified bodies of innocent victims were cremated in place of the police collaborators; these victims have yet to be identified by the police. Third, the Punjab Police has made at least one fraudulent identification to claim compensation. During the proceedings of the mass cremations case before the Bhalla Commission of Inquiry, a subcommission of the National Human Rights Commission of India, (NHRC), Ensaaf investigated five randomly-selected "illegal cremations" identified by the police. One of the identifications was fraudulent – a friend of police officials falsely reported an "illegal cremation," hoping to cash in on the compensation offered. The NHRC ordered the state, which had submitted this identification, to investigate this one incident, but rejected the request for independent investigations of all police identifications. Further, the Bhalla Commission continued to rely on police admissions without investigations. Lastly, the security forces, including the Punjab Police, are the accused perpetrators. Instead of investigating cases, survivors have accused them of thwarting investigations by intimidating witnesses and survivors, obstructing justice by harassing lawyers, and failing to comply with court orders, among other abuses.

If there is so much data available, why can't you make claims about the number of people killed by security forces during the Punjab counterinsurgency campaign?

While there are a number of different sources that have collected information about the number of people killed by security forces in Punjab, each one of these sources, or data sets, alone is incomplete. In order to make scientifically defensible estimates of the number of people killed, we need to apply the demographic technique of multiple systems estimation to the available data. This scientific estimation method is used widely in adjusting for undercount in population censuses. In epidemiology, multiple systems estimation (MSE) is used for estimating the incidence of rare diseases from multiple registration lists of diseased people. More recently, multiple systems estimation has been used in large-scale human rights projects to estimate the magnitude of conflict-related mortality.

Multiple systems estimation uses multiple data sets that estimate the size of a population being measured, by modeling the probability that different types of documented individuals in a population are included or excluded from a particular data set. Records in each data set need to be matched against records in all other data sets and assessed as to whether they represent the same or different individuals. From this record matching process, inclusion/exclusion probabilities are estimated and from that scientists can estimate the number of individuals who were never documented by any of the available data sets.

What are the future prospects for this work on the Punjab counterinsurgency?

Two main areas of future research into the questions investigated in this study include extending the analysis of existing data by matching and merging multiple, independent datasets. Additional collection of data on enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, encounter killings, and "illegal cremations" throughout Punjab is also needed. Together with qualitative data, our findings will provide evidence of the true magnitude and patterns of violence throughout Punjab, contributing to the debate about the impact of counterinsurgency strategies on fundamental human rights.

Will this analysis help locate the disappeared or reveal their stories?

This analysis helps to amplify the voices of the families of the disappeared and place their individual testimonies and affidavits in a larger historical context. The violations that have been analyzed took place at a time when the rule of law was suspended to permit security forces to "fight terrorism." As Ram Narayan Kumar states in his preface to the report, "With the methodological reliability of the compilation and analysis of events data, it becomes easier for all involved, irrespective of political dispositions, to see how they become socially responsible when the rule of law is suspended."

This report breaks new ground in clearly showing that as the counterinsurgency operations in Punjab intensified, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions were committed on a large-scale and spread from a concentration in Amritsar district to almost all other districts of Punjab. This preliminary, descriptive analysis lays the groundwork for additional analyses that will draw on inferential demographic and statistical methods to clarify the magnitude and pattern of all disappearances and extrajudicial executions during the counterinsurgency period in Punjab, including those that have not – or cannot – be documented. It is possible that this analysis will help locate information that will help determine what happened to people who were disappeared during this conflict, and it will support legal inquires that may pressure authorities into revealing the truth about this violent period in the history of Punjab.

Do the families of the killed and disappeared support this analysis?

Our work is primarily motivated by the expressed need from survivors of the Punjab counterinsurgency to seek justice for the human rights abuses perpetrated by security forces. Dara Singh speaks for the wishes of many survivors for truth and justice:

The police murdered both of my sons, and they won’t even admit that they did something wrong. They call my sons terrorists! The police are the terrorists.... The government should also give us copies of their records relating to the murder of my sons, so we can figure out what really happened.

What has been the impact of quantitative studies of human rights violations in other regions?

Quantitative analysis of conflict-related mortality during periods of political conflict has a long history. Since 1991, Benetech's Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) has analyzed killings and other crimes in more than 17 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

In Guatemala, HRDAG's use of multiple systems estimation helped establish that between 1960 and 1996 approximately 200,000 people were killed and disappeared. This analysis found that 94% of victims belonged to the Mayan ethnic group and that 98% of killings and disappearances were attributed to the state. This quantitative analysis, along with qualitative, legal, and historical analyses by Guatemala's Commission on Historical Clarification (CEH, by its Spanish acronym), contributed to CEH's official finding that the Guatemalan army committed acts of genocide against the Mayan people. At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, HRDAG’s analysis of mortality and migration data helped to clarify the plausibility of explanations by Milosevic of why the conflict sparked a mass exodus of refugees. This analysis showed that the data were inconsistent with Milosevic's claim that people in the region were fleeing NATO bombing and also inconsistent with Milosevic's further assertion that people were fleeing atrocities by the Kosovo Liberation Army. HRDAG analysis clarified that there was strong association between acts of ethnic cleansing by the Yugoslav army and the spatial-temporal pattern of conflict-related mortality and conflict-related migration. In Peru, HRDAG’s analysis, which drew on data collected independently by multiple human rights organizations and the Peruvian Truth Commission (CVR, by its Spanish acronym), found that approximately 69,000 people were killed during the 1985–2000 civil war. HRDAG's estimate of the total number of people killed in the twenty-year conflict between government forces and Maoist insurgents more than doubled earlier, incomplete estimates. The analysis also revealed a stark difference in the way that people living outside the capital region were affected by the conflict, challenging the way many Peruvians understood their history. For example, the department of Ayacucho, in the Andean mountains, accounted for a total of 38% of the total estimated deaths throughout the conflict. Prior to the work by HRDAG and CVR, Peruvians had understood that most of the conflict had occurred in the Andean highlands. What most observers did not understand was the scale of disproportionality across space: there are more than fifty times as many people in Lima as Ayacucho, yet HRDAG and CVR found that there were approximately six times more killings in Ayacucho than in Lima. The relative risk of being killed in the civil war was more than 300 times greater for someone in Ayacucho than for someone in Lima.

January 26, 2009

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. Our empirical findings indicate that the intensification of coordinated counterinsurgency operations in the early 1990s was accompanied by a shift in state violence from targeted enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions to large-scale lethal human rights violations, accompanied by mass "illegal cremations."

"With the methodological reliability of the compilation and analysis of events data, it becomes easier for all involved... to see how they become socially responsible when the rule of law is suspended ....For being a step in this direction, this study is seminal."

Ram Narayan Kumar, South Asia Forum for Human Rights

As part of government counterinsurgency operations from 1984 to 1995, Indian security forces disappeared and extrajudicially executed Sikh militants as well as individuals who had no known connection to the militancy. Special counterinsurgency laws facilitated human rights violations and shielded perpetrators from accountability. The government of India dismisses claims that enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions were widespread and systematic, asserting instead that human rights violations were unavoidable "aberrations" in the war on terrorism. A former Director General of Punjab Police has repeatedly claimed that he led the "most humane counterinsurgency operation in the annals of history."

To date, this report is the most comprehensive quantitative analysis of available data on human rights violations during the Punjab counterinsurgency. This analysis brings together six data sets comprising more than 21,000 records. The report draws on documentation from the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) and its subcommissions, the People's Commission on Human Rights Violations in Punjab (PCHR), and the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP). The authors further examined reports from the Tribune newspaper in Punjab from 1988 to 1995, and recovered logbooks from six municipal cremation grounds. This documentation collectively identifies and documents 2,059 "illegal cremations" acknowledged by the NHRC, approximately 2,196 victims of reported enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions documented by CCDP and PCHR, 17,582 victims of lethal violence reported by the Tribune, and 1,484 records from municipal cremation grounds.

Human rights groups have collected extensive qualitative evidence that provide detailed descriptions and analyses of the type and range of abuses committed by Indian security forces and the corresponding impunity that persists in Punjab. Until now, however, human rights groups have lacked the capacity to conduct quantitative research to record the level of human casualties and enforced disappearances from the Punjab counterinsurgency period.

By using quantitative methods, this report demonstrates the implausibility of lethal human rights violations being "random" or "minor aberrations" as claimed by Indian officials. Specifically, the report notes that:

♦ The available data sources, each collected through substantially different social, political, and legal processes, are generally consistent in noting that enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Punjab were overwhelmingly concentrated in the early 1990s when the government intensified its counterinsurgency operations against alleged Sikh militants. The strong correlation between reported lethal human rights violations and overall reported lethal violence across time is inconsistent with official claims that human rights violations were random or minor aberrations.

♦ The data collected by the local Tribune newspaper and the CCDP show that reported enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, and encounter killings shifted from being almost exclusively concentrated in Amritsar district to being dispersed throughout almost all districts of the state of Punjab after 1992. This dispersal suggests that human rights violations were not random acts of violence but rather part of a specific plan or set of widespread practices used by security forces during the counterinsurgency.

♦  The information reported by the Tribune shows that few security officials were reported to have been killed during "encounters" and that instead these incidents, on average, involved a lone killing of an alleged "militant" or a "civilian," consistent with qualitative findings that reported encounters were often faked. The observed correlation between reported lethal human rights violations and reported militant encounter deaths is also consistent with the phenomena of "fake encounters."

♦  As state violence increased substantially after the beginning of Operation Rakshak II in November 1991, notably fewer bodies of the disappeared and extrajudicially executed were recovered by the next of kin compared with the period prior to 1991. In the period after 1991, the NHRC data also acknowledges a notable increase in mass "illegal cremations." This correlation suggests that these two phenomena are driven by a shift in state violence towards large-scale lethal human rights violations coupled with mass cremations.

♦  The strong, positive correlation between the reported acts of lethal violence and "illegal cremations" acknowledged by the NHRC is inconsistent with official claims that that these reported disappeared persons are not dead but instead immigrated abroad.

♦  Age-sex data on reported victims of enforced disappearances, collected by the PCHR, CCDP, and NHRC, are consistent with the hypothesis that these violations were overwhelmingly targeted against young Sikh males between the ages of 18 and 45 whom security forces alleged were members of the militant movement.

Future analyses, which draw on multiple data sources and inferential statistical methods, will allow for clarification of the total magnitude and patterns of violence throughout Punjab.

Future analyses, which draw on multiple data sources and inferential statistical methods, will allow for clarification of the total magnitude and patterns of violence throughout Punjab, broadening the discussion about the impact of counterinsurgency strategies on human rights. Scientifically defensible analysis of political violence can help enable honest dialogue to improve public understanding of the counterinsurgency in Punjab. By triangulating independent data sources and employing reproducible scientific methods, questions about the magnitude, pattern, and responsibility associated with lethal violations connected to the Punjab counterinsurgency can be engaged transparently. The answers to these questions will ultimately strengthen truth, justice, and institutional reform processes.

(Fremont, CA, January 26, 2009) As Indians gather for Republic Day celebrations this week to mark the adoption of the Indian constitution, new analysis reveals the human cost of suspending constitutional rights in India. Ensaaf and the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) released a report today presenting verifiable quantitative findings on mass disappearances and extrajudicial executions in the Indian state of Punjab, contradicting the Indian government’s portrayal of the Punjab counterinsurgency as a successful and “humane” campaign.

This report uses quantitative methods to scientifically demonstrate the implausibility that these lethal human rights violations are random or minor aberrations as suggested by Indian officials.

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.

“This report challenges explanations by Indian security forces for enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions using more than 20,000 records from independent sources which have been analyzed using statistical methods,” said Romesh Silva, a demographer at HRDAG and co-author of the report. “This scientific analysis reveals that answers given by the government regarding the nature and extent of these violations are implausible given the available evidence. The victims and their families have a right to the truth.”

The report demonstrates that reported enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions were most strongly correlated with reported deaths from encounters. The pattern is consistent with previous qualitative evidence that the events reported in the Tribune were staged (as “fake encounters”) to conceal the illegal nature of the violence and the security forces’ responsibility for these acts.

Human rights groups have collected extensive qualitative evidence about the types of abuses committed by Indian security forces and the impunity that persists in Punjab. Until now, human rights groups have lacked the capacity to conduct quantitative research to analyze these violations and definitively challenge explanations put forward by the Indian government.

This report uses quantitative methods to scientifically demonstrate the implausibility that these lethal human rights violations are random or minor aberrations as suggested by Indian officials. The strong correlation found between lethal human rights violations and overall lethal violence across time and space supports the conclusion that enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions were part of a specific plan or widespread practice used by security forces during the counterinsurgency.

"This scientific analysis reveals that answers given by the government regarding the nature and extent of these violations are implausible given the available evidence," said Romesh Silva, co-author of the report.

The analysis also demonstrates that between 1988 and 1995, militant deaths reported from an “encounter” or exchange of gunfire with the security officers were strongly correlated with lethal human rights abuses reported by the victims’ families. This correlation supports assertions by human rights groups that these encounters were fabricated by security forces to conceal extrajudicial executions.

October 18, 2007

India: Time to Deliver Justice for Atrocities in Punjab
Investigate and Prosecute Perpetrators of 'Disappearances' and Killings

(Delhi, October 18, 2007) - The Indian government must take concrete steps to hold accountable members of its security forces who killed, "disappeared," and tortured thousands of Sikhs during its counterinsurgency campaign in Punjab, Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf said in a new report released today.

In order to end the institutional defects that foster impunity in Punjab and elsewhere in the country, the government should take new legal and practical steps, including the establishment of a commission of inquiry, a special prosecutor's office, and an extensive reparations program.

The 123-page report, "Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India," examines the challenges faced by victims and their relatives in pursuing legal avenues for accountability for the human rights abuses perpetrated during the government's counterinsurgency campaign. The report describes the impunity enjoyed by officials responsible for violations and the near total failure of India's judicial and state institutions, from the National Human Rights Commission to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), to provide justice for victims' families.

Beginning in the 1980s, Sikh separatists in Punjab committed serious human rights abuses, including the massacre of civilians, attacks upon Hindu minorities in the state, and indiscriminate bomb attacks in crowded places. In its counterinsurgency operations in Punjab from 1984 to 1995, Indian security forces committed serious human rights abuses against tens of thousands of Sikhs. None of the key architects of this counterinsurgency strategy who bear substantial responsibility for these atrocities have been brought to justice.

"Indians and the rest of the world are watching to see if the current Indian government can muster the political will to do the right thing. It if fails, then the only conclusion that can be reached is that the state's institutions cannot or will not take on the security establishment. This has grave implications for Indian democracy."
Jaskaran Kaur, co-director, Ensaaf

"Impunity in India has been rampant in Punjab, where security forces committed large-scale human rights violations without any accountability," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "No one disputes that the militants were guilty of numerous human rights abuses, but the government should have acted within the law instead of sanctioning the killing, 'disappearance,' and torture of individuals accused of supporting the militants."

A key case discussed in detail in the report is the Punjab "mass cremations case," in which the security services are implicated in thousands of killings and secret cremations throughout Punjab to hide the evidence of wrongdoing. The case is currently before the National Human Rights Commission, a body specially empowered by the Supreme Court to address this case. However, the commission has narrowed its efforts to merely establishing the identity of the individuals who were secretly cremated in three crematoria in just one district of Punjab. It has rejected cases from other districts and has ignored the intentional violations of human rights perpetrated by India's security forces. For more a decade, the commission has failed to independently investigate a single case and explicitly refuses to identify any responsible officials.

"The National Human Rights Commission has inexplicably failed in its duties to investigate and establish exactly what happened in Punjab," said Adams. "We still hold out hope that it will change course and bring justice to victims and their families."The report discusses the case of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a leading human rights defender in Punjab who was abducted and then murdered in October 1995 by government officials after being held in illegal detention for almost two months. Despite credible eyewitness testimony that police chief KPS Gill was directly involved in interrogating Khalra in illegal detention just days prior to Khalra's murder, the Central Bureau of Investigation has thus far refused to investigate or prosecute Gill. In September 2006, Khalra's widow, Paramjit Kaur, filed a petition in the Punjab & Haryana High Court calling on the CBI to take action against Gill. More than a year later, she is still waiting for a hearing on the merits.

"Delivering justice in Punjab could set precedents throughout India for the redress of mass state crimes and superior responsibility," said Jaskaran Kaur, co-director of Ensaaf. "Indians and the rest of the world are watching to see if the current Indian government can muster the political will to do the right thing. It if fails, then the only conclusion that can be reached is that the state's institutions cannot or will not take on the security establishment. This has grave implications for Indian democracy."

Victims and their families seeking justice face severe challenges, including prolonged trials, biased prosecutors, an unresponsive judiciary, police intimidation and harassment of witnesses, and the failure to charge senior government officials despite evidence of their role in the abuses.

Tarlochan Singh described the hurdles he has faced in his now 18-year struggle before Indian courts for justice for the killing of his son, Kulwinder Singh:

"I used to receive threatening phone calls. The caller would say that they had killed thousands of boys and thrown them into canals, and they would also do that to Kulwinder Singh's wife, kid, or me and my wife...

"The trial has been proceeding ... with very little evidence being recorded at each hearing, and with two to three months between hearings. During this time, key witnesses have died."

After Mohinder Singh's son Jugraj Singh was killed in an alleged faked armed encounter between security forces and separatists in January 1995, he pursued numerous avenues of justice. He brought his case before the Punjab & Haryana High Court and the CBI Special Court, but no police officer was charged. A CBI investigation found that Jugraj Singh had been killed and cremated by the police. However, 11 years and a few inquiry reports later, the CBI court ended Mohinder Singh's pursuit for accountability by dismissing his case in 2006. Mohinder Singh described his interactions with the CBI:

"On one occasion when [the officer] from the CBI came to my house, he told me that I wasn't going to get anything out of this. Not justice and not even compensation. He further said that: 'I see you running around pursuing your case. But you shouldn't get into a confrontation with the police. You have to live here and they can pick you up at any time.' He was indirectly threatening me."

Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf expressed concern that the Indian government continues to cite the counterinsurgency operations in Punjab as a model for preserving national integrity.

"The government's illegal and inhuman policies in the name of security have allowed a culture of impunity to prevail that has brutalized its police and security forces," said Kaur. The report suggests a comprehensive framework to address the institutionalized impunity that has prevented accountability in Punjab. The detailed recommendations include establishing a commission of inquiry, a special prosecutor's office, and an extensive reparations program. "The Indian government needs to send a clear message to its security services, courts, prosecutors, and civil servants that it neither tolerates nor condones gross human rights violations under any circumstances," said Adams. "This requires a comprehensive and credible process of accountability that delivers truth, justice, and reparations to its victims, who demand nothing more than their rights guaranteed by India's constitution and international law."