Lawyers For Human Rights International

The Indian Constitution protects the right to life enshrined in Article 21, but for long the death penalty is being awarded by the Law courts unaware of the trauma and mental torture every awardee undergoes till he is executed.

Even Section 302 of Indian Penal Code provides for punishment upto death to the convict. In 1999 the Union government proposed for extending the death penalty for the crime of rape--- a proposal that drew country wide criticism.

Torture and custodial violence continue to be regularly reported in Punjab, despite the end of the militancy period in the state in the mid-1990s.

Our criminal justice system can be classified into four successive stages. First comes the enactment of criminal law by the legislature. Secondly, the task of the police to enforce them; thirdly, the stage of criminal trial where the question of guilt is decided; and finally the task of reformatory exercise to change the convict through the process of reformatory punishment. But each tends to be the province of a different group of people.

Putting a cursory glance over the policies and functioning ofthe SAD-BJP Government in Punjab during the three years of its mis-rule, one could easily hold that the Badal-SAD govt. has proved to be another regime that could prove every bit as monstrous.

Putting a cursory glance over the policies and functioning ofthe SAD-BJP Government in Punjab during the three years of its mis-rule, one could easily hold that the Badal-SAD govt. has proved to be another regime that could prove every bit as monstrous.

I wish to come on record by calling the Judgment banning People’s Commission on human rights violations in Punjab as arbitrary, vindictive and a slur on the institution. It would not be unjust to say that this document is the worst gift from the Punjab & Haryana High Court to the new millennium. The judgment has baffled many human rights organisations associated with the activities of the People’s Commission.

Even after fifty years of India’s Independence and ter-centenery celebrations of the Khalsa Panth, the State of Punjab suffers the wrath of Police brutality and indifference of State machinery towards the economic and political development of its subjects.

Even after more than five decades since India became a State party to the fundamental document of Protection and Promotion of human rights viz.. Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted and proclaimed by the member states of the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10,1948,

Figures shows that incidents of custodial violence and abuse of power by the police have been largely reported in the states where militancy and insurgent activities are at its peak. For example, Punjab and Kashmir tops the list of States where thousands of innocent people have been killed in fake encounters