Ashok Agrwaal

Ashok Agrwaal is named third among the authors of Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab, the first volume of the final report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP), published in Kathmandu in May 2003. Its title page reads "Ram Narayan Kumar with Amrik Singh, Ashok Agrwaal and Jaskaran Kaur". A review of the book in The Tribune names the four as researchers of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, and says they documented 672 cases of police cremation in Amritsar district by interviewing relatives and going through police records. Human Rights Watch described the CCDP report as documenting 672 'disappearance' cases pending before the National Human Rights Commission, and said it showed that investigations into such abuses are possible.

The volume gives no biography of him, and the sources found here say no more about him. A Supreme Court order of 12 December 1996, printed in the book's appendix, lists an advocate named Ashok Aggarwal among the counsel for the petitioners in the Paramjit Kaur case on illegal cremations; the book does not say whether he is the co-author.

Key moments

• May 2003: Reduced to Ashes is first published, for the CCDP, by the South Asia Forum for Human Rights.
• 1 June 2003: The Tribune's review names him with the other three authors as one of four "intrepid researchers" and contrasts their work with that of the CBI.

What he is remembered for. His name stands on the title page of the report that put the testimonies of the families of the disappeared, with police, court and cremation records, into one published volume.