Brijinder Singh Sodhi

Brijinder Singh Sodhi is a lawyer who acted for Paramjit Kaur Khalra, the widow of Jaswant Singh Khalra, in the trial at Patiala of the police officers accused over her husband's abduction in 1995. Amnesty International's April 1998 report names him as one of the two lawyers acting for her in the special CBI court, the other being Rajvinder Singh Bains; Reduced to Ashes names both.

Key moments

• 3 September 1997: the court rules that private lawyers for Paramjit Kaur may address it. The accused had argued, in January 1997, that only a lawyer engaged by the prosecution could; the court took eight months to decide (Amnesty).
• 7 March 1998: at the hearing, Amnesty says, the accused policemen reportedly openly abused Sodhi and threatened the petitioner's lawyers in front of the magistrate. Sodhi testified that the magistrate did not try to stop them and went on to grant the accused bail. As he left the court the accused officers again threatened him, and he later received threatening telephone calls and was reportedly told to drop the cases or meet the fate of other advocates who had disappeared in Punjab. Reduced to Ashes records that the accused officers threatened the lawyers in front of the magistrate, that the lawyers got threatening calls, and that the tyres of their cars were slashed outside the court. Amnesty's report says the tyres of a vehicle belonging to members of the Khalra Action Committee were slashed at the same hearing.
• 12 August 1998: Sodhi and Bains move the Patiala trial court for directions to the CBI to strengthen its charge sheet against the accused.
• 1998 to 1999: the CBI takes nine months to say it needs more time to complete its investigation after the testimony of SPO Kuldip Singh, and on 22 November 1999 applies instead to discount that testimony (pp. 67 to 68).

What he is remembered for. He is remembered as one of the two lawyers who kept Paramjit Kaur Khalra's case before the Patiala court while the accused officers threatened them, and who pressed the CBI to strengthen its charge sheet. The threats described above are the accounts of Amnesty International and of the report's authors; the sources found here do not record any finding on them.