🚀 go-pugleaf

MIT Committee on Rights in South Asia (CORSA)

presents

Human Rights in Punjab: A View from Up Close

With

Justice Ajit Singh Bains (retd.)
Chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organization

Major General Narindar Singh (retd.)
Member, Coordination Committee on Disappearances in Punjab


Time: 3:00 P.M.
Saturday May 22, 1999

Place: Room 307
Student Center, MIT
Cambridge, Massachusetts

For more information contact CORSA at
mit_corsa@yahoo.com

               *******
Major General Narindar Singh has held several important
staff and command appointments in his 37+ years of
service in the Indian army.  He is a veteran of WW-II
(Burma Campaign), the Hyderabad Operation, and the 1965
& 1971 India-Pakistan wars.  In the 1971 Indo-Pakistan
war, he trained the Mukhti Bahini forces in Bangladesh.
He was, however, jailed in 1986 for over two years
after he condemned the Indian army's assault on the
Golden Temple in Amritsar (Operation Bluestar). 

Over the last fifteen years he has been actively
involved in various human rights groups, most notably
the PHRO (Punjab Human Rights Organization).  He has
spent a considerable amount of time in the villages of
Punjab, helping with the efforts to document cases of
police atrocities.  He has also been working closely
with Ram Narayan Kumar in investigating cases of
extra-judicial killings by the police and paramilitary
forces in Punjab.  He is an active member of the
Coordination Committee for Disappearances in Punjab
and the recently formed People's Commission. 

                  **********

Justice Ajit Singh Bains comes from a patriotic
activist family of Mahilpur in Hoshiarpur district in
Punjab. He began his career as a lecturer in Economics. 
During these years he actively participated in the
defence of the peoples rights, a feature that has
characterized his life. 

After teaching for three years, he opened a legal
practice in Hoshiarpur in 1954, shifting to the High
Court in 1961. Justice Bains was elected to the Punjab
Bar Council in 1964, and was appointed Deputy Advocate
General by the Punjab government. In the 1 970's when
Prakash Singh Badal's government gave police powers to
kill naxalites in police encounters, he resigned from
this position. He became chairman of the Punjab and
Haryana Bar Council in 1972 and judge of the Punjab and
Haryana High Court in 1974 until his retirement in
1984. The Punjab government appointed Justice Bains to
head the Bains Committee in October 1985, with the
mandate to review cases of persons under trial and
investigation in connection with the political
agitation between 1981 and 1985. He was also appointed
a member of the Punjab Jail Reform Committee - a
position he later resigned in protest against the
re-entry of paramilitary forces into the Golden Temple
on April 30, 1986.

He was kidnapped by police on April 3, 1992 and
imprisoned under the Terrorism and Disruptive
Activities Prevention Act (TADA) for six months without
a trial and was released due to a campaign waged
internationally by human rights activists. While in
Bura il jail he wrote an important document, State
Terrorism and Human Rights, which was smuggled out,
printed, and circulated internationally. Although he
was released from jail, his passport was impounded and
he had to approach the Punjab Haryana High Court to
direct the government of India to give him his
passport. As a result of this he was not able to attend
the funeral of his younger brother who passed away in
August 1996. Justice Bains actively defends the rights
of all. He has spoken at the Human Right s rallies in
Manipur, Pune, Delhi and other parts of India against
the violation of Human rights by the Indian State.

Justice Bains, who is also chairman of the Punjab Human
Rights Organization, has traveled far and wide in North
America and Europe , lecturing on the situation in
Punjab and the violation of human rights there. He has
given talks in numerous universities, professional and
community organizations. He has met with legislators of
various countries, the International Commission of
Jurists and news reporters to give his views on the
situation in India.

Justice Bains is the author of "Siege of the Sikhs -
Violation of Human Rights in Punjab" which has been
translated into several languages. 

____