The Peoples' Commission

The first convention of the Committee, dedicated to the memory of Jaswant Singh Khalra, was held on 10 December 1997. The convention, presided over by former judge of the Supreme Court Kuldip Singh, called on the Punjab government led by the Akali Dal to constitute a Truth Commission to investigate all reports of human rights violations in the State, as it had pledged in its election manifesto. The convention also decided to form a Peoples' Commission to undertake these inquiries if the Punjab government declined to do so. When the Akali Dal government declared that in its view the past was better left buried, the Committee announced the formation of a panel of judges to constitute a Peoples' Commission on 26 April 1998. K.J. Reddy, retired judge of the Supreme Court of India and former Chairman of the Law Commission, was to head this Peoples' Commission and two other judges were to form the panel: D.S. Tewatia, former Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and H. Suresh, a retired judge of the Bombay High Court.

The Peoples' Commission was thus set up as an independent tribunal to examine complaints of illegal abductions, custodial torture, enforced disappearance, summary execution and illegal cremation, and to give its findings on the following: a) whether from 1979 to 1997 the agencies of the State carried out and tolerated, directly or indirectly, any of the above atrocities and thereby committee violation of human rights as guaranteed under the constitution of India and international covenants; b) whether agencies or individual agents of the State have prima facie committed any offence under the law of the land or international law; and c) to further suggest the remedies available to the victims of the aforementioned atrocities including their entitlement to compensation from the State and its agencies.

The Peoples' Commission on Human Rights Violations in Punjab decided to hold its first sitting on the 8th, 9th and 10th of August, 1998. Meanwhile the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab had created an Incident Report Form (see Appendix B), through which to collect information on disappearance cases in an organized and verifiable manner. The Incident Report Form was designed after consulting formats used by several international human rights organizations to receive complaints of violations.

The basic plan was to post public notices in the English and vernacular press to elicit complaints from the victims of atrocities and their relatives. A Secretariat of the Peoples? Commission, specially constituted for this purpose, would scrutinize the complaints received and would undertake further examination before placing them before the Commission. The Commission would examine these cases and, if satisfied that prima facie the complaints are justified, would issue notice to the respondents and would call for official information. Concerned officials would be asked to explain their stand on the persons involved and to substantiate the claims by testimonial and documentary evidence. The Commission would also call for the following records: the cremation ground records of each police district insofar as they relate to cremations carried out by the police; the municipal records pertaining to dead bodies disposed of by the police; the records of each police district pertaining to custodial deaths and encounters; and press releases including photographs issued by the police or the state government relating to deaths in custody, escape and deaths in armed encounters. The Commission would then go on to cross examine material witnesses from both sides before giving its finding within the mandate of its terms of reference. (The Rules of the Peoples' Commission, adopted during the initial August 1998 meeting, can be found in Appendix C.)

Volunteers from the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab began distributing and collecting the Incident Report Forms as the Peoples' Commission prepared its overall framework for investigation. It is clear that collecting the kind of documentation required to prove extrajudicial killings is time-consuming, dangerous, and fraught with methodological pitfalls. Volunteers engaged in this work have to be specially trained to ensure reliability of claims, and have to move from village to village to personally verify and cross-check all complaints. They interview the complainants and any witnesses to the killing or disappearance that can be located, and they search out documentary evidence for each element of the Incident Report Form. Cases that cannot be fully supported by evidence external to the individual narrative itself must be set aside. Although the Committee is certain to end up seriously underestimating the scope of the executions in Punjab through adherence to rigorous standards of proof, it nevertheless committed itself to the collection of only those cases that could withstand challenge. As of this writing there are nearly one thousand such cases.

The nature of the inquiries into the antecedents and circumstances of severe rights violations and the identities and motives of the individuals responsible for them means that all care must be taken to protect the individuals who come forward with complaints. Committee volunteers and members have themselves already faced substantial harassment as this work has begun, and a smear campaign in the press was directed at key individuals. The level of intimidation has now reached the point that the entire project appears to be in jeopardy, and this is the reason for the current report - which may also function as a call to action.