The Valiant Jaswant Singh Khalra

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According to the Central Bureau of Investigation in India, 2,097 people had been illegally cremated in three districts of Punjab state between 1984 and 1994 though human rights advocates have said more than 6,000 could have been cremated. Answer: Yes, Ajit Singh Sandhu sent a message stating, "If I can make 25,000 Sikhs vanish then making one more Sikh vanish will not be difficult at all." But he didn't care about the threats and carried on with his mission day and night.

Punjab government institutions have equated human rights activists with terrorists and consistently used the insurgency to justify their actions. In the Punjab mass cremations case discussed below, the response of the Punjab police and government of Punjab has been to portray demands for a full accounting of abuses as negating the contributions of police in fighting insurgency. 40 Submissions by the state of Punjab have stressed the number of police killed in the insurgency. 41 In a 2002 application before the National Human Rights Commission, the state of Punjab denied the abuses but also wrote: Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi’s Last Battle (London: J. Cape, 1985), pp. 184-5. Ram Narayan Kumar, “The Ghalughara: Operation Blue Star—A Retrospect,” Sikh Review (Calcutta: June 2000) . Through foggy bifocals, Gurbhej Singh starts telling me about Jaswant, his friend since the early 1970s. Paramjit had mentioned Gurbhej several times. “He would never forget a court date. Through the years, he would just call the day before and say, ‘Okay, I am going, who else is?’” In requesting the Supreme Court to rule in their favor, the Punjab police have attempted to gain sympathy by referencing “the barrage of writ petitions” they are facing: As he fondly remembers the days he met Khalra organising with other young leftists, I cannot help ask him of the now embittered relationship between Punjab’s “leftists” and “Sikhs.”

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The park is located in west Fresno, which is home to a large Punjabi Sikh population, according to Deep Singh, executive director of the nonprofit Jakara Movement. Sikh residents are also frequent users of the park, Singh added. The Government denied the allegations that there may be several thousand cases of disappearances in Punjab…. Scrupulous care had been taken to protect the rights of the individual under due process of law. Habeas corpus was available to all under the Indian judicial system in all circumstances. Wherever there was any suspicion of police excesses, action was taken. In Punjab, action had been taken against 210 police personnel…. All cases of alleged disappearance which were brought to the attention of police authorities were investigated. 36 Baines, who has served on the city council since 2010, said he worked with the nonprofit Jakara Movement for about a year before introducing the resolution to rename the park. He added that, to his knowledge, there are no monuments in the city named after any South Asian individuals. Now, a film, Punjab ’95 has been made on Khalra which will premiere at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)2023 in September this year.

Who Killed the Sikhs". Journeyman Pictures. 4 June 2002. "a portion of this documentary can be viewed here"Are we this desperate to be seen on a television screen when we have our own ways of collectively honouring and mobilising around Bhai Jaswant Singh’s words and actions? Is our generational struggle for Sikh liberation and Khalistan a mere spectacle and source of gross entertainment for mass Indian audiences to indulge in on a Saturday evening at the movies, only to forget about the movie or suddenly become experts on Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life and politics after watching one obscure film created by the Indian industry and fronted by a Sikh face?

As per CBI investigation records quoted by Supreme Court (speaking through Sathasivam J - as his Lordship was then - and Chauhan J in Prithpal Singh v State of Punjab) [7] he was a human rights activist working on the abduction, elimination, and cremation of unclaimed human bodies during the Militancy Period in Indian Punjab. The court observed that the police had been eliminating young persons under the pretext of being militants and disposing of their bodies without record. [8] The end to counterinsurgency operations has brought an end to systematic extrajudicial killings and “disappearances” in Punjab. However, the vast majority of these “disappearances” remain unresolved, and major perpetrators of the abuses from 1984 to 1995 have received promotions and currently occupy senior positions in the Punjab police. Their ongoing tenure and the impunity granted to almost all perpetrators have created a system that continues to facilitate custodial abuses, in particular illegal detention and torture. 33

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Khalra was last seen in September 1995, washing his car in front of his house in Amritsar. Six Punjab police officials were later convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for Khalra's abduction and murder. The Indian government were so scared by this humble man they directly threatened Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra to either stop the great sewa he was doing or else he would also join the long list of the Singhs that had been made to disappear (by the police). Bhai Sahib remained fearless and continued to expose the Indian government. We remember S. Jaswant Singh Khalra on the anniversary of his disapperance. We reflect here on his work, his death his legacy and how the uproar over his abduction caused ripples in Canada.