Aug
11
Government Files Response in PC Sharma and NHRC Case
August 11, 2004 | Comments Off on Government Files Response in PC Sharma and NHRC Case
Last week, we reported that the Supreme Court directed the government of India to explain why it appointed former Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) P.C. Sharma to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
In its response, the government pointed out Sharma’s role in the Punjab illegal cremations matter, where the CBI’s investigation has demonstrated weighty flaws:
In an affidavit filed in response to a petition by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) challenging Sharma’s appointment, the home ministry said he was a distinguished Indian Police Service officer and had investigated and prosecuted several important cases, including Punjab mass cremation case and cases related to the 2002 sectarian violence in Gujarat, both of which involved serious violations of human rights.
The first volume of the Final Report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, titled Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab, demonstrates how the CBI failed to properly investigate the issue of illegal cremations, and may have purposefully concealed information on abuses by security forces:
The faults we found with the CBI’s investigation are weighty; they go beyond mere technical problems and raise fundamental questions regarding the integrity of the institution’s approach to this matter of illegal cremations. Some critical questions, prompted by a comparison of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP’s) data with the information contained in the CBI’s lists, are:
- A large number of those cremated were clearly named by the Punjabi press. Why did the CBI fail to identify them?
- Families of many victims spoke with the CBI officials and also filed information at their office in Amritsar. Why did the CBI fail to use that information while compiling its lists of cremations?
- In many cases, the police handed the bodies to the families and the cremations were carried out at their villages without the police presence. Why did the CBI record these cremations as having been carried out by the police?
- Finally, did the CBI purposefully conceal the identities of some of the people it included on its third list of unidentified cremations? (page 161).
The report further discusses the CBI’s failure to properly identify people, contradictions or discrepancies in its data, among other issues.
The Court will conclude the case regarding Sharma’s appointment on August 31.
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