Spotlight

Mapping the Killings

View the first-of its-kind interactive data visualization site, mapping and profiling 5300+ victims of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Punjab, India. This interactive site is based on Ensaaf’s Punjab-wide census—the largest initiative in the history of India to document disappearances and unlawful killings.

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Report Punjab Police

On Human Rights Day, Khalra Mission Organisation, the Punjab Human Rights Organisation, and Ensaaf released a new web-based human rights tool to help empower victims of government abuse to report their experiences at ReportPunjabPolice.org.

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Punjab Documentation Project

Ensaaf has undertaken the largest initiative in the history of India to document disappearances and unlawful killings. This documentation process will establish the human toll of the violence in Punjab from 1984 to 1995 and will result in several thousand survivor interviews and photographs, and hundreds of hours of video footage.

2009 Survey

Over the summer, more than 15 researchers and data entry staff participated in a major Ensaaf survey, interviewing hundreds of families of the disappeared or unlawfully killed in Punjab. This ambitious achievement, involving interviews of over 1,000 individuals, represented the largest deployment of human rights investigators in Punjab in over a decade. The staff underwent two weeks of rigorous training, followed by six weeks of long hours implementing the survey.

Quantitative Analysis

In a joint report published in 2009, Ensaaf and Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group presented verifiable quantitative findings scientifically demonstrating the implausibility that lethal human rights violations were random or minor aberrations as stated by Indian officials. This analysis was based on over 21,000 records of deaths.

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Ensaaf/Human Rights Watch Joint Report on Impunity in Punjab

On October 18, 2007, Ensaaf and Human Rights Watch released a 123-page report, “Protecting the Killers: A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India,” photo essay, and video testimonials. The report examines the challenges faced by victims in pursuing legal accountability for human rights abuses perpetrated during the government’s counterinsurgency campaign and also proposes a comprehensive framework to address the institutionalized impunity that has prevented accountability in Punjab. The report is based on the analysis of thousands of legal records, news articles, and other documents, and dozens of interviews and meetings with survivors, lawyers, and NGOs.

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1984 Pogroms of Sikhs

Ensaaf’s report, “Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India,” analyzes thousands of pages of previously unavailable affidavits, government records, and arguments submitted to the 1985 Misra Commission, established to examine the Sikh massacres in Delhi, Kanpur, and Bokaro. The report reveals the systematic and organized manner in which state institutions and Congress officials perpetrated mass murder in November 1984 and later justified the violence in inquiry proceedings. The report applies the international law of genocide and crimes against humanity to the pogroms. In the second edition, Ensaaf articulates the failings of the Nanavati Commission and the Action Taken Report after a thorough consideration of the evidence at the government’s disposal. Preface by Barbara Crossette.

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Expert Torture and Trauma Medical Study

In 2005, Ensaaf partnered with the Nobel Prize-winning organization Physicians for Human Rights and the NYU/Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture on a study that demonstrated that survivors of the disappeared and killed continue to suffer long-term physical and psychological trauma.

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Summer 2005 Torture and Arbitrary Detention Report

On October 5, 2005, Ensaaf released its report Punjab Police: Fabricating Terrorism through Illegal Detention and Torture, highlighting the continuing impact of impunity.

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Other Programs

Community Organizing & Education

We educate the general public and organize survivors to advocate for their rights to truth, justice, and reparations.

Legal Advocacy

We engage in strategic litigation to hold perpetrators accountable and set national precedents on human rights norms.

United Nations Advocacy

We alert the United Nations to critical human rights issues about the situation of impunity in Punjab, as well as specific cases.

Appear for the Disappeared

Join Ensaaf for our Walkathon and Fundraiser. Take 5,269 steps (4 km) in one day in honor of each victim profiled on our Mapping Crimes Against Humanity site.

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Fight for truth and justice now, and double your donation.

Mapping the Killings

View our interactive data visualization site, mapping and profiling 5300+ victims.

Rajvinder S. Bains:
This procedure has failed completely.

Rajvinder S. Bains, a human rights attorney in the Punjab & Haryana High Court for over 20 years, discusses his experiences with the High Court in cases filed on behalf of victims of disappearances or extrajudicial executions. (Oct. 2007)

Mohinder Singh:
What justice can we get from here?

Mohinder Singh discusses the abduction and murder of his son by the Punjab police and his pursuit of numerous avenues of justice. (Oct. 2007)

Tarlochan Singh:
A Mockery of Justice

Tarlochan Singh describes his son Kulwinder Singh’s abduction by the Punjab police, and his 18-year continuing legal struggle for justice for Kulwinder Singh’s extrajudicial execution. (Oct. 2007)

Gurcharan Singh and his Desire for Justice

In an SBS Dateline program on Punjab, Geoff Parish discusses the Punjab governments offer of compensation to 17 families, with no investigation or admission of liability by the state, in the Punjab mass cremations case. Gurcharan Singh rejected this offer. (Apr. 2002, Uploaded with permission from SBS.)

Jaswant Singh Khalra: Investigations into Illegal Cremations

An SBS Dateline program on Punjab describes human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalras discovery of the Punjab polices use of secret cremations to hide evidence of extrajudicial executions. The clip includes an interview with human rights activist Ram Narayan Kumar. (Apr. 2002, Uploaded with permission from SBS.)

A Witness Among the Bodies: Surviving Bluestar

On the 30th Anniversary of Operation Bluestar, Ensaaf presents an eyewitness account of the Indian Army attack on The Harmandir Sahib Complex in Amritsar, Punjab, from June 1 and June 6, 1984. This exclusive interview reveals how the Indian Army intentionally killed thousands of civilians and used excessive force during this assault.

Ensaaf Speaks with Manak about Court Decision,
November 28, 2013

On November 26, 2013, the Punjab & Haryana High Court allowed the appeal of the State of Punjab and reversed and nullified the decision of the Single Judge directing investigation by the CBI. Not only did it refuse to order an inquiry into Satwant Singh Manak’s allegations that he witnessed the Punjab Police torture and unlawfully kill ten people, it also fined Manak, ordering him to pay 2,000 rupees to each of the accused police officers.
 

A Labor Of Love: Contesting Impunity

On July 23, 1989, Punjab Police officers abducted, tortured, and unlawfully killed 35-year old Sikh community leader Kuljit Singh Dhatt. For 25 years, his family has relentlessly pursued justice, attending over a hundred hearings, petitioning various courts and commissions, and enduring police harassment and intimidation of witnesses. On May 9, 2014, a judge convicted three police officers of abduction in order to murder Kuljit Singh Dhatt, sentencing them to a mere five years. The legal battle continues, now in the higher courts.

Navkiran Kaur Khalra:
“We are proud of what our father did.”

Navkiran Kaur Khalra, daughter of murdered human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra, recounts her family’s struggle for justice and her father’s discovery of thousands of killings and secret cremations by the Punjab police to hide evidence of wrongdoing. (Oct. 2007)

Jaswant Singh Khalra: Last International Speech – The Struggle for Truth

In his last speech made to a Canadian audience, Jaswant Singh Khalra discusses his investigations into the thousands of illegal killings and secret cremations by the Punjab police and his readiness to die to expose the truth about these crimes. Jaswant Singh Khalra begins his speech with a moving fable about the struggle of truth and light against expanding darkness. He recounts how he traced the fate of many disappeared Sikhs to Amritsar’s municipal cremation grounds. Through government records obtained from these municipalities, Khalra exposed a detailed history of systematic human rights violations in which security forces abducted, murdered, and secretly cremated an estimated 6,017 Sikhs in Amritsar district alone–then one of 13 districts in Punjab–from 1984 to 1995. (Apr. 1995)

Paramjit Kaur Khalra on Impunity in Punjab

In this video, Paramjit Kaur Khalra describes the need for a truth commission to redress the thousands of disappearances and killings in Punjab, India perpetrated during the counterinsurgency of 1984 to 1995. In September and October 1995, Indian security forces illegally detained, tortured, and killed her husband, human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, for his work uncovering over 2,000 cases of extrajudicial executions and secret cremations in Amritsar district alone. On November 4, 2011, India’s Supreme Court upheld life imprisonment for five officers involved in Khalra’s unlawful abduction, torture, and killing. Mrs. Khalra continues to seek justice for the all victims of illegal killings and disappearances.

Seeking Ensaaf

On Human Rights Day, we share this documentary to show you how your support helps us document abuses on the ground. Seeking Ensaaf, filmed by Andrew Heskett, Ryan Westra, and David Thompson, recipients of the Sikh Scholarship Program at Chapman University, in August 2013, follows Ensaaf field workers as they document a case of extrajudicial killing in Punjab. Thank you for joining us on this journey to end impunity and achieve justice for the disappearances and unlawful killings of the Decade of Disappearances in Punjab.

A Light of Justice: Commemorating Jaswant Singh Khalra

On the 20th anniversary of the police abduction of human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra, Ensaaf released A Light of Justice: Commemorating Jaswant Singh Khalra. This 30-minute film contains interviews with Khalra’s family, as well as archival footage of Khalra when he was investigating secret cremations and disappearances in Punjab.

Twenty years after Khalra’s martyrdom, the architects of the widespread and systematic human rights abuses in Punjab remain free. The Indian government is no closer to bringing Gill and the other perpetrators to justice for organizing Khalra’s – and thousands of other innocent Sikhs’ – death.

Please watch and share this film via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The Last Killing

Satwant Singh Manak joined the Punjab Police to provide his family with a stable income. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in response to an insurgency, Indian security forces committed systematic and widespread torture, disappearances, and unlawful killings in Punjab. Manak silently witnessed the torture and executions of 15 unarmed individuals at the hands of his fellow police officers. The killing of Kulwant Singh, a teenager who had passed 10th grade, deeply affected Manak. No longer able to suppress his conscience and the horror of what he witnessed, he resigned from his job and filed a case against his fellow police officers. That case covers ten of the victims.