 115,000 Sikhs killed by Indian
Government police, paramilitary forces and death squads since 1984..... |
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((World Sikh News: October, 1994) |
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| .....torture is pervasive and a
daily routine in every one of India's 25 states, irrespective of whether arrests are made
by the police, the paramilitary forces or the army. |
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(India Torture, Rape & Deaths in Custody: March 1992) |
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| In Punjab at least 3,800
politically motivated killings were committed by Government forces in 1990. |
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(Amnesty International Annual Report 1991) |
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| Amnesty International recorded
the deaths of 415 people in the custody of the police and security forces since 1985. In
all 415 cases there is evidence the victims, who involve women and children, were brutally
beaten or otherwise tortured until they died. The 415 cases reported are only a sample ...... according to Indian news media many cases are never reported at all ...... |
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|
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| In India there are 25,000
political prisoners. |
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(Amnesty International Annual Report 1992) |
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| 15,000 political prisoners held
in Punjab alone. |
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(New York Times: December 11, 1989) |
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EXTRA
JUDICIAL
EXECUTIONS
| Hundreds
of People "disappeared" or were extra judicially executed in
"encounters" staged by the police and security forces. |
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(Amnesty International Annual Report 1992) |
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| Official
figures given by the Home Minister in March 1993 put the number of people held under TADA
in Punjab at 14,457. These however do not include several thousand others who simply
"disappear". Nearly all " disappearances" and attributed to the Punjab
police, where no explanation about the reason for an arrest is given and arrests are often
not registered at police stations. When matter is brought in court by relatives, the
police either deny the arrest, or simply claim the victim escaped or that he was killed in
an encounter. |
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(India Abroad: October 1992) |
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SPECIFIC CASES |
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| ....in
August 1991 the father of a boy charged with a petty theft simply accompanied his son to
the police station in Delhi. The father was not charged with any crime, yet he too was
detained, mercilessly beaten and died shortly afterwards. |
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(Amnesty International News Release: March 1992) |
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| Balbir
Kaur was tortured by the police for 8 days in December 1987. Even with three months of
medical treatment on her battered body doctors were not able to save her and she passed
away in March 1988. |
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(National Punjab Students Union White Paper: November 1989) |
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| A doctor
and a police official said today that the army troops shot several captive Sikhs at point
blank range here last week after tying their hands behind their backs. |
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(New York Times: June 14, 1984) |
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| Courts in
Punjab have found compelling evidence of police responsible for disappearances. In cases
where the courts have intervened, the police have often responded by intimidating
witnesses ...... |
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(The Tribune, August 1993) |
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| I
yesterday discharged a patient aged 18-20, who had been in this hospital for three months.
Twenty percent of this body had suffered deep burns from a hot clothes iron. These burns
were .... so serious that I and other doctors had only succeeded in saving his life .... He had also been shot in the armpit. His torturing was during interrogation by the regular army. |
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(Statement by a doctor in Srinagar Hospital: December 1990) |
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| Police
officers in Uttar Pradesh, stop a tourist bus and arrest 10 Sikh men who had been on a
pilgrimage of holy place. The 10 were later found shot dead in a forest nearby. The police
claim they were killed in an armed "encounter". The supreme court ordered the
state government to pay compensation to the families of the 10 victims. |
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(Amnesty International Annual Report 1992) |
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