Jaspal Singh Dhillon

Jaspal Singh Dhillon was a human rights worker of the Akali Dal who, with Jaswant Singh Khalra, brought to light the secret cremations of bodies by the Punjab Police. Human Rights Watch describes him and Khalra as human rights activists of the Akali Dal political party. Reduced to Ashes (2003) names him as chairman of the Human Rights Wing of the Shiromani Akali Dal, with Khalra as general secretary and Amrik Singh Muktsar as vice-chairman, and says the three had been trying to make the Akali Dal adopt justice and the rule of law as serious parts of its political agenda. The book names him as the son of Vijay Singh.

Key moments

• 1994 to early 1995: In 1994 and early 1995 Khalra and Dhillon used government crematoria records to expose secret cremations by the police: over 6,000 in just one of Punjab's then 13 districts, says Human Rights Watch. The press note itself, as Reduced to Ashes prints it, counted about 2,000 cremations at the Durgiana Mandir ground in Amritsar, 700 at Tarn Taran and 400 at Patti, between June 1984 and the end of 1994.
• 16 January 1995: The Human Rights Wing held a press conference at Chandigarh on 16 January 1995 and released a press note signed by Khalra and Dhillon. It ends: "The investigation team comprised of Mr. Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon."
• April 1995: Human Rights Watch says the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, acting on the information the two had gathered, asked the Supreme Court for a comprehensive inquiry into killings that ended in secret cremations.
• August 1995: Khalra, under threat from SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu, discussed it with Dhillon and Amrik Singh Muktsar among others. All his friends and sympathisers "vigorously advised him" to ask the High Court for bodyguards and to leave Amritsar for a time. Khalra was abducted on 6 September 1995.
• 7 April 1996: he gave a statement to the CBI under section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
• 4 November 2011: The Supreme Court's judgment of 4 November 2011 lists him as prosecution witness number 11 in the Khalra trial, among the witnesses whose testimony showed the accused officers' motive; some of them said Khalra had been receiving death threats over his investigations into illegal encounters and cremations (para 38).

What he is remembered for: he is the second name on the press note of 16 January 1995, the document from which the mass cremations case grew, and a witness to the threats made against Khalra before his abduction.