Justice Ajit Singh Bains

Ajit Singh Bains is a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court who became one of the best-known human rights voices in Punjab in the Kharku years. Amnesty International called him a well-known human rights activist in 1992, and Reduced to Ashes, the report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, names him as chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organisation (PHRO). The Wire describes the advocate Rajvinder Singh Bains as his son.

The Five Member Panthic Committee's Declaration of Khalistan of 1986, as Gurmit Singh prints it in volume I of History of Sikh Struggles (Appendix 59, p. 538), names Bhai Ajit Singh Bains, ex-judge, as president of an enquiry committee set up by the Barnala Government, and quotes his surprise that in none of 100 alleged police encounters had a policeman been wounded or a murder case registered against the police. The sources found here do not give that committee's own report.

Key moments

• 3 April 1992: Amnesty International says he was arrested in Chandigarh at 10.30 a.m. and was reportedly taken away by the Punjab police. The Ropar SSP apparently denied it, and he was produced before the Deputy Commissioner on 4 April. On 6 April his wife saw him at Anandpur Sahib police station; he said he had been beaten, and the police showed her three First Information Reports under TADA, over speeches at a Sikh religious event at Anandpur Sahib on 18 March, that did not name him. Amnesty International issued an urgent action on his arrest on 7 April 1992.
• April 1992: Reduced to Ashes says his arrest was not acknowledged for two days, that he was manhandled and shown in handcuffs in public, and that he was booked under TADA for allegedly taking part in a secret meeting of "militant leaders" at Anandpur on 18 March. It says an inquiry later ordered by the High Court found his name was not in the original first information report, and argues that the aim was to paralyse the PHRO, not to win a conviction. Chief Minister Beant Singh told the legislative assembly on 6 April that the government would not release him because his organisation was engaged "in defending terrorists" (p. 52).
• 13 November 1992: he issued a statement demanding the release of Baljinder Singh of Saido Lahil from illegal custody, after the young man's father came to him; several newspapers carried it (p. 174).
• August 1995: Jaswant Singh Khalra consulted him about the threats he faced from SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu; Bains gave the CBI a statement on 10 September 1996 (p. 59).

What he is remembered for. Reduced to Ashes concludes that the killing or disappearance of two activists and the arrests of Bains and of the PHRO's general secretary effectively paralysed the regional human rights groups (pp. 52 to 53). He is remembered as the retired judge who led the PHRO and whose arrest, in the report's reading, was meant to silence it.