Information on Sikh detenus sought

By Our Staff Correspondent

CHANDIGARH, MARCH 31. A human rights organisation, the `Movement Against State Repression' (MASR), has written to the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, urging the government to provide particulars of all prisoners under legal or illegal detention for offences related to terrorism in Punjab and other States. The MASR has sought Mr. Vajpayee's support to its earlier request to the State's Chief Minister, for an independent census of human rights violations, including killings and disappearances during 1984-1996. It said that in case the State Government was not for such an exercise, the CBI should be entrusted with the probe.

The MASR has pointed out that there was a confusion on the number of persons killed or detained during the period of terrorism in the State. It said that the Central or State Governments has not disclosed the list of those arrested, bailed out, discharged or convicted under TADA and other ``black laws''.

It referred to a starred question in Parliament, where the government has been quoted as giving the figure of 52,268 persons detained all over the country under TADA as on March 10, 1993. Of these 14,457 were in Punjab and 14,094 in Gujarat. The MASR has presumed that as Gujarat was a peaceful State at that time, most of the TADA prisoners there were Sikhs. It quoted the Uttar Pradesh government, for having admitted the presence of around 5,000 Sikhs as TADA prisoners, after the November 1994 incident in Pilibhit jail, where six Sikh prisoners were clubbed to death.

The MASR letter has quoted the Congress MP, Mr. Jagmeet Singh Brar, citing the Union Home Minister's figure of 14,873 prisoners being held under TADA in Punjab. The Chief Minister a few days later corrected his police chief, who put the tally at 700. But in the same year the then National Human Rights Commission chairman was quoted in a national daily as saying that by July 1994, the TADA prisoners had risen to 46,000 in three States, with Punjab accounting for 17,000, Gujarat for 19,000 and Jammu & Kashmir for 10,000.

The MASR, on its own has calculated that during militancy, the total number of persons taken as prisoners could range between three to five lakhs, while it estimated that in the year 1993-94, there were about 95,000 Sikhs held as prisoners, detained under TADA and other laws. This figure also includes 50,000 under illegal detention with the State police, paramilitary forces and the Army, both within and outside the State.

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Section  : Other States
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