Rajiv Singh Randhawa

Rajiv Singh Randhawa is a journalist from Ajit and was a friend of the human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra. He is the eyewitness named in Reduced to Ashes, the 2003 report prepared for the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, which says he was visiting Khalra at his home in Amritsar on the morning of 6 September 1995 and witnessed his abduction.

The report says that around 9:20 that morning armed men of the Punjab Police took Khalra as he washed his car outside his home. It says Randhawa identified three men in a police jeep behind the blue Maruti van as Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar, SHO Surinderpal Singh of Sarhali police station and Prithipal Singh, a head constable of Manochahal police station. He telephoned Khalra's wife, Paramjit Kaur Khalra, and went with her to Islamabad police station, which refused to register her complaint (Reduced to Ashes, pp. 6 to 7, 61).

Key moments

• 6 September 1995: witnesses the abduction of Khalra.
• July 1998: Amritsar police detained him and his friend Sarabjit Singh separately, on charges of "forming an organization supporting a separate state of Khalistan". The Punjab Human Rights Commission investigated and found that the police had falsely implicated him. It recommended legal action against the officers responsible for "registering a deliberately concocted criminal case", and the report says the Punjab government did not respond (p. 66).
• 5 September 2000: he was arrested outside Sri Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple, as he tried to give a memorandum on the human rights situation in Punjab to the UK home secretary, Jack Straw, who was visiting. The police charged him with robbery and possession of illegal arms. The report calls the case "totally baseless" and says it aimed to discredit him as a witness in the Khalra case (pp. 66 to 67).

The Tribune reported in July 2026 that an FIR of July 1998 named a Rajiv Singh, the advocate Sarabjit Singh Verka and Rashpal Singh. It says an inquiry by an officer of ADGP rank, held on the Punjab Human Rights Commission's recommendation, concluded that the case was registered "because of their association with the Khalra case" and found the allegations false, and that the Punjab government did not carry out the Commission's recommendation. A local court later acquitted the accused and awarded them compensation in 2007. The Federal's 2026 account of the trial names a witness, Rajiv Singh, whom it says was implicated in four cases that were found false.

Known for: Being the eyewitness to the abduction of Jaswant Singh Khalra, and a witness whom the police charged in cases that Reduced to Ashes calls false or baseless.