People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR)

The People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) is a civil liberties and democratic rights organisation based in Delhi. By its own account it began in 1977 as the Delhi unit of a national forum, the People's Union for Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights, and became PUDR on 1 February 1981. It says that it takes no foreign or institutional funding and that it opposes laws such as TADA, POTA, UAPA and AFSPA. Its work is investigations, public statements, campaigns and legal action.

Its part in this history: PUDR followed the November 1984 killings of Sikhs in Delhi, and the inquiries that were meant to deal with them, from the first weeks until at least 1989. The 1984 report names Gobind Mukoty as PUDR's president.

Key moments

• June 1984: Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles, volume III, quotes a PUDR report on the Army action in the Sri Harmandir Sahib complex. According to the passage, many ordinary people, among them unarmed women and children, were killed indiscriminately, and post-mortem reports showed that some of the dead had their hands tied behind their backs. The book does not name the report.
• November 1984: with the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), it held a joint inquiry into the killings of Sikhs in Delhi, covering 31 October to 10 November. The report, Who Are the Guilty?, came out in November 1984, with a second edition in December. It concluded that the attacks were "the outcome of a well organised plan", marked by deliberate acts and omissions by important Congress (I) politicians and by authorities in the administration. It estimated that more than a thousand people were killed, against an official figure of 325 to 7 November that it called "ridiculously low".
• 26 November 1984: PUDR and PUCL filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court asking for a commission of inquiry led by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and for protection for survivors from harassment. Ensaaf reports that the Commissioner of Police replied that the Delhi police had already begun an independent inquiry under Ved Marwah, and that the Court dismissed the petition because of that promise.
• 1985: according to Ensaaf, the Misra Commission rejected the applications of PUDR and PUCL to take part in its inquiry, while accepting other civil society groups and recognising the Citizens' Justice Committee as the victims' representative.
• 22 April 1987: it published Justice Denied, a critique of the Misra Commission report on the events in Delhi. The report had gone before Parliament on 23 February 1987.
• 30 October 1989: it published Murder of a Corpse on the Jain-Banerjee panel. PUDR says the panel received 400 affidavits but recommended just three cases after eight months, and that the Delhi High Court judgment quashing it reflects a pathological state of the administration in denying justice to the victims.

Where it stands: PUDR still works from Delhi. Its site lists publications, press statements, a Prison Project and newsletters, and carries its 1984 reports.