Where Is Democracy In India?  (Part 3)
 3. Liberty
In January 2015, human rights activist Sukhman Dhami wrote:
“Whether it’s mass graves in Kashmir, mass cremations in Punjab, razing villages in Chhattisgarh, or rampant torture, India has refused to confront and redress atrocities perpetrated by its security forces. Just four years ago, the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission uncovered nearly 3,000 bodies in numerous unmarked mass graves….
“These mass graves mirror the pattern of mass cremations uncovered in Punjab, where security forces secretly cremated thousands of bodies to hide evidence of their crimes committed during the counter-insurgency operations in the 1980s and 90s.” [16]
These victims are the produce of the Indian State’s death squads, but the State punishes the human rights activists who expose evil.
Jaswant Singh Khalra was murdered by Indian police in 1995 for uncovering and reporting that police death squads were secretly rounding up Sikh men in the Punjab, imprisoning them off the books, torturing them, killing them, and then quietly cremating their bodies at local cremation grounds.
In Amritsar alone, Jaswant identified the names of 2,097 Sikhs who were secretly cremated after being murdered by a police death squad. [17]
Amritsar is just one of thirteen districts in the Punjab.
The Indian State admits it killed Jaswant Singh Khalra in the exact same manner as the sufferers of the secret genocide he exposed, but it took sixteen years before it upheld the convictions of six low-level officers involved in his abduction, torture and murder.
In 1996, Jalil Andrabi was murdered by Indian soldiers for documenting mass disappearances in Kashmir.
Before his murder, while visiting Geneva, Switzerland, he warned the United Nations: “More than 40,000 people have been killed, which includes all — old men and children, women, sick and infirm.” [18]
Twenty days after his disappearance, Jalil’s body was discovered in a river — he was stuffed inside a sack, his hands were tied behind his back, his eyes were gouged out, his body was covered in wounds indicating torture, and he had been shot in the head.
Again, it was an agent of the Indian State who was to blame for murdering this peaceful human rights activist. An investigation identified Major Avtar Singh. But he could not be found, because he inexplicably managed to flee the country, taking refuge in North America, where he ultimately committed suicide.
Meanwhile, India refuses to sign the UN Convention Against Torture. The use of torture is employed as a daily tool by police. A study of 9 out of India’s 30 states conducted by watchdog group “People’s Watch” calculated that India’s security forces torture 1.8 million people every year. [19]
Laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act — the AFSPA — allow Indian security forces to shoot to kill upon mere suspicion, arrest without probable cause other than suspicion, and search and seize without warrant. The law grants total immunity from prosecution. Human Rights Watch calls it “a tool of state abuse, oppression, and discrimination.” [20]
Surat Singh Khalsa is on hunger-strike since January 2015 to demand freedom for political prisoners. Irom Sharmila, called the “Iron Lady of Manipur,” has been on hunger-strike since the year 2000 to protest the AFSPA after Indian security forces used the law to get away with massacring 10 civilians waiting at a bus stop. [21]
 And yet, with so much blood on its hands, the Indian State wants a national law requiring people to receive government permission before changing their religion.
So, we must ask, where is the liberty?
(Sikh 24
11 Sep 2016)