E-Paper
HC notice to Punjab, Centre on 6,733 extra-judicial killings in militancy years
The plea was filed in December 2019 by Punjab Documentation and Advocacy Project (PDAP) and nine victim families, demanding setting up of a committee under a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge into these alleged killings and disappearances
Four years after the plea was filed, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday sought a response from the Centre and Punjab government on a public interest litigation (PIL), seeking independent probe into the alleged extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances, estimated at 6,733, during Punjab’s militancy years.
The plea was filed in December 2019 by Punjab Documentation and Advocacy Project (PDAP) and nine victim families, demanding setting up of a committee under a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge into these alleged killings and disappearances. The plea also demands that the victim families be compensated and the officers, who indulged in the “criminality” be prosecuted.
The response has been sought by May 9.
PDAP is an NGO comprising activists, lawyers, civil society members and victim families, who, as per the plea, have carried out investigation for eight years in the state. The plea claims 6,733 encounter killings, custodial deaths and illegal cremations took place in Punjab between 1984 and 1995.
As per the plea, the Supreme Court ordered investigation into the cremations that took place in three crematoriums in Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Majitha which led to the identification of around 1,528 persons from the “secret cremations”.
“The present petition covers extra-judicial killings and illegal cremations outside three crematoriums and is based on information collected from about 26 districts/sub-districts of Punjab,” it says.
“..records collected provide direct evidence that the bodies of the victims were brought to these crematoria as unidentified or cremated as unclaimed. When compared to the FIRs and receipt books of purchase of firewood and cloth for cremation, the dates of cremation and number of bodies brought for cremation match the dates of killings and abduction in a large number of cases,” it claims adding that the “modus operandi and criminality” is identical to the Amritsar killings.
As per the plea, in addition to crematoria data, the petitioners have accessed around 1,200 FIRs of reported encounters/ claims that detained persons had been killed in cross-firings or had escaped. “The FIRs tell a strikingly similar story: police officers were left unscathed during the encounter while the person in their custody invariably dies in the firing and the identity of perpetrators are unknown,” it alleges.
