About us.

The Punjab Documentation and Advocacy Project (PDAP) started in 2008. What started as a formalised attempt to pool the collective experience, knowledge and data of the Punjab conflict has steadily evolved into a systematic, comprehensive and evaluative system of documentation of the human rights abuses in Punjab in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

The original aims were to document cases of those extra-judicially executed, ‘disappeared’ and arbitrarily detained in Punjab, India between 1978-1996, as comprehensively as possible.

By 1984 the central government imposed President’s rule (direct rule) on Punjab. Punjab was under direct rule from Delhi between 1984 and 1986, and again between 1988 and 1992. The imposition of direct rule brought with it a dramatic increase in human rights abuses, notably enfrced disappearances and executions between 1984 to 1995 during counter insurgency operations.

Police and security forces abducted young Sikh men on suspicion that they were involved in militancy, often in the presence of witnesses, yet later denied having them in custody._ Most of the victims of such enforced disappearances are believed to have been killed.

It Continues. Still counting the dead and disappeared.

Two decades have passed since the conflict and the need for truth, accountability and redress for the victims remains. The project seeks to critically scrutinise the lack of accountability, redress and impunity of perpetrators and the deliberate attempts by the Indian State and judiciary to deny justice to the victims of this conflict.

Unlike similar conflicts, there has been limited attempt at deconstructing the issues surrounding the Punjab conflict and the impact of its aftermath. We believe that the development of a culture of accountability and human rights in Punjab is crucial to the long-term peace and security of the state, indeed for India as a whole.

Between 1978-1996 the Punjab witnessed a brutal period in human rights violations characterised by extra-judicial executions, disappearances and torture. Jaswant Singh Khalra, a prominent human rights activist, exposed the practice of thousands of mainly young Sikh men being killed in police custody and their bodies being cremated as “unclaimed and identified.” The police would claim in the vernacular Punjabi media that the victims had been killed an “encounter” (shoot out) or had escaped from their custody. Many of victims were In fact in the custody of the Punjab police, severely tortured and then executed. In three crematoria in Amritsar alone (Patti, Tarn Taran and Durgiana Mandir), Khalra uncovered details of 2097 so-called “unclaimed and unidentified bodies.

To conceal the evidence of their crimes, security forces secretly disposed of the bodies, usually by cremating them, as well as dumping bodies into canals. Such was the size , scale and systematic nature of the killings in March 1992, according to newspaper reports_ “the government of Rajasthan had formally complained to Punjab’s chief secretary that these canals were carrying large numbers of dead bodies into the State….that many dead bodies, with hands and feet tied together, were being fished out when water in-flow in canals was stopped for repair works.”

In August 1995, following Khalra high profile public exposure of the Punjab Police mass cremations, he himself, was abducted and disappeared by commandos of the Punjab Police. It took almost 17 years to convict a number of subordinate Punjab Police personal of his murder. Despite key witnesses in the trial giving evidence that Khalra had been interrogated by Mr KPS Gill ( the DGP of Punjab Police ) before his death, no action has ever been taken by the prosecuting agencies of India to interview Mr Gill, let alone investigate or prosecute him.

After Jaswant Singh Khalra’s murder, the Committee for Coordination of Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP), undertook the difficult and dangerous task of documentation in Punjab. However a majority of cases remain undocumented.

Observers estimate that, since 1984, over 50,000_ people have been killed in Punjab and thousands more have suffered torture and illegal detention. It is believed that responsibility for a significant amount of these deaths lies with a variety of Indian State forces, including the Army, the Border Security Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Central Reserve Police Force, and, most of all, the Punjab Police, who the European Court of Human Rights described as “accustomed to act without regard to the human rights of suspect[s]”.

In response to a question in the Punjab Assembly, the Punjab government acknowledged that nearly 25,000 people had died as a result of political violence in Punjab since 1984. In 1994, the U.S. State Department reported that the Indian government paid over 41,000 cash bounties to police officers for extra-judicial executions, these bounties unsurprisingly encouraged extrajudicial executions and disappearances_.

Since its inception the project first primarily focussed on the Gurdaspur district of Punjab, which is the second largest affected area of disappearances and extra-judicial killings in Punjab, following Amritsar and Tarn Taran.

The documentation involved visiting the majority of 1500 villages in Gurdaspur. As well as Ajnala (in Amritsar).

The project is currently focused on Ferozpur believed to be the third largest affected area and amongst the most poorest, economically deprived and backward areas of Punjab. Our documentation till date has revealed that the border areas of Majha namely Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Ferozpur and Faridkot were not only the poorest regions of Punjab but also disproportionately affected by the violence. The documentation seeks to examine this phenomena.

The project has collected information and testimony from a wide number of sources which establish a discernible pattern of concentrated and targeted human rights abuses.

The project has also examined data from a number of sources in an attempt to breakdown the conflict to the pre 1984 attack Sikh agitation period.

The 1984 attack on Sri Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) and military operation throughout Punjab, in an attempt to establish the number of killed who can be identified from the attack.

The Project has undertaken an exhaustive study to document, collate and analyse reported killings in the Punjabi vernacular press( the daily Punjabi newspapers of Ajeet and Jagbani), for the entire period.

About us.

How it started…

It Continues. Still counting the dead and disappeared.