Mass illegal cremations case before the Supreme Court and the NHRC

Who: The Supreme Court of India, with Justice Kuldip Singh on the bench in 1995; the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI); the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC); the Punjab and Union governments; and the petitioners, Paramjit Kaur Khalra (habeas corpus, Writ Petition (Crl) 497 of 1995) and the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP, Writ Petition (Crl) 447 of 1995). From 1997 the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP) took up the documentation.

What: The case began with Jaswant Singh Khalra's press note of 16 January 1995, which Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon released to show that police had secretly cremated thousands of bodies as unidentified. Its main steps, as Reduced to Ashes records them, were these.

• January 1995: the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed the Akali Dal human rights wing's writ as “vague” and its organisation as lacking standing. The CIIP then moved the Supreme Court on 3 April.
• 15 November 1995: after Khalra's abduction on 6 September 1995, the Supreme Court told the CBI to inquire into the abduction and into the press note, which it said, if correct even partially, would be “a gory-tale of Human-rights violations”.
• 30 July 1996: the CBI reported that nine Punjab Police officers, acting on the orders of SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu, were responsible for Khalra's abduction.
• 9 and 12 December 1996: the CBI filed its fifth and final report. The Court's order said it showed 585 bodies fully identified, 274 partly identified and 1,238 unidentified, that it “discloses flagrant violations of human rights on a mass scale”, and asked the NHRC to “determine all the issues”, with any compensation “binding and payable”. The book's own chronology gives 582, 278 and 1,238; Human Rights Watch gives 2,097 cremations in all.
• 4 August 1997 and 10 September 1998: the NHRC held that it acted with the Supreme Court's own powers, and the Court, rejecting the Union's challenge, said the NHRC “is given a free hand”.
• 13 January 1999: the NHRC confined its inquiry to the 2,097 cremations at the three Amritsar-district grounds. On 11 October 1999 the Supreme Court declined to interfere, and the CIIP withdrew from active participation.
• 18 August 2000: the NHRC endorsed Punjab's offer of Rs 100,000 to each of 18 of 88 claimants without admitting liability; the 18 families rejected it on affidavit.
• 2004 to 2007: Human Rights Watch reports that the NHRC compensated the next of kin of 1,051 people for wrongful cremation and 194 for the violation of the right to life, and on 9 October 2006 appointed retired Justice K. S. Bhalla to identify the remaining 800 or so unidentified bodies; his last hearing was on 29 June 2007.

Where: The Supreme Court and the NHRC in New Delhi, for cremations at the three grounds Khalra's press note named: Durgiana Mandir in Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Patti.

Why it mattered: The CBI's report put an official figure on secret police cremations in Amritsar district: 2,097. When Reduced to Ashes went to press in May 2003 the NHRC had, it says, “not heard a single victim's testimony or deposition”. Human Rights Watch wrote in 2007 that the NHRC had not let a single victim family testify and had relied on the Punjab Police to identify the dead, and that the CBI told the NHRC in 1999 that it had registered 30 regular cases, 12 finalised and 18 pending.