Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab

The Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP) is a Delhi-based human rights group. Reduced to Ashes, the report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, says it has been leading the human rights research in Punjab since 1988 and has sustained the litigation on the illegal cremations before the Supreme Court and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The report names Tapan Bose, secretary-general of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights, as a founder member.

The petition: On 3 April 1995 the CIIP moved the Supreme Court under Article 32 (Writ Petition (Crl.) 447 of 1995) for a comprehensive inquiry into disappearances and illegal cremations by the police in Punjab, after Jaswant Singh Khalra had released records from three Amritsar crematoria on 16 January 1995. Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf say it asked for an inquiry into extrajudicial executions across Punjab and told the Court that cremation ground workers said several bodies were often burned with the firewood needed for one. After Khalra was abducted on 6 September 1995 the Court, on 15 November 1995, ordered the CBI to inquire, and the CIIP's petition was heard together with that of his wife, Paramjit Kaur Khalra, before Justice Kuldip Singh. The CBI's final report of 9 December 1996 listed 2,097 illegal cremations at three crematoria in Amritsar district, and the Court referred the matter to the NHRC, observing that the report disclosed a "flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale".

Before the NHRC

• 4 August 1997: the NHRC held that it was a designate of the Supreme Court with the Court's own powers over the whole matter, the position the CIIP had argued. The Supreme Court upheld this on 10 September 1998.
• 13 January 1999: the NHRC confined its inquiry to the 2,097 cremations in Amritsar district. The CIIP challenged this several times: its review was dismissed on 24 March 1999, and on 24 August 1999 it asked the Supreme Court to clarify, but on 11 October 1999 the Court declined to interfere. The CIIP then withdrew from active participation in the NHRC's hearings, while continuing to monitor them.
• 18 August 2000: the NHRC endorsed Punjab's offer of Rs 100,000 to each of 18 families without admitting liability. The CIIP travelled through Punjab, and all 18 families rejected the offer on affidavit. On 15 February 2001 the NHRC reaffirmed that it would investigate all 2,097 cremations.

Outcome: Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf report that in more than ten years the NHRC compensated the next of kin of 1,051 individuals for wrongful cremation and of 194 for violation of the right to life, but investigated no individual cremation. They say the CIIP showed the NHRC in February 2007 that police had fabricated at least one identification. They add that the Supreme Court retains jurisdiction in the case. The sources found do not describe the CIIP's work after 2007.