115,000 Sikhs killed by Indian
Government police, paramilitary forces and death squads since 1984.....
(World Sikh News: October, 1994)
.....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.
(India Torture, Rape & Deaths in Custody: March
1992)
In Punjab at least 3,800 politically
motivated killings were committed by Government
forces in 1990.
(Amnesty International Annual Report 1991)
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 ......
(India Torture, Rape & Deaths in Custody, Al Report:
March 1992)
In India there are 25,000 political
prisoners.
(Amnesty International Annual Report 1992)
15,000 political prisoners held
in Punjab alone.
(New York Times: December 11, 1989)
EXTRA JUDICIAL EXECUTIONS
Hundreds of People "disappeared" or
were extra judicially executed in "encounters"
staged by the police and security forces.
(Amnesty International Annual
Report 1992)
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.
(India Abroad: October 1992)
SPECIFIC CASES
.....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.
(Amnesty International News Release:
March 1992)
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.
(National Punjab Students Union
White Paper: November 1989)
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.
(New York Times: June 14, 1984)
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 ......
(The Tribune, August 1993)
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.
(Statement
by a doctor in Srinagar Hospital: December 1990)
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.
(Amnesty
International Annual Report 1992)
