See Amnesty International, “Break the Cycle.” On August 19, 2005, Justice R.L. Anand, a member of the Punjab State Human Rights Commission, stated that more than 80 percent of the complaints filed before the Commission were against Punjab policemen. “Cops need to amend ways, says Justice Anand,” Tribune (Chandigarh), Aug. 20, 2005, http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050820/punjab1.htm#14 (accessed April 13, 2007). Ensaaf, “Punjab Police: Fabricating Terrorism through Illegal Detention and Torture” (California: Ensaaf, 2005). Some will no doubt argue that such a “prominent” telling of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s story, despite any “limitations”, will create some level of “awareness” that may spark people to look further into his history. What is this awareness actually of, and what is the history of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh that will be seen? In May 2006, Ensaaf partnered with Human Rights Watch (HRW), REDRESS, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice to issue a call to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for the investigation and prosecution of former police chief KPS Gill for his role in Khalra's torture and murder. In addition, Ensaaf assisted Paramjit Kaur, Khalra's widow, in drafting the international law arguments on superior responsibility in a petition that called on the High Court to investigate and prosecute Gill for his role in the crimes committed against Khalra. The petition was filed on September 6, 2006. A source told Variety that there are political forces at play in the film being pulled from Toronto. Canada has the second largest Sikh population in the world after India. The Punjab police have also associated human rights activists with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] such as in this deposition which claimed:

Are we this desperate to be seen on a television screen when we have our own ways of collectively honouring and mobilising around Bhai Jaswant Singh’s words and actions? Is our generational struggle for Sikh liberation and Khalistan a mere spectacle and source of gross entertainment for mass Indian audiences to indulge in on a Saturday evening at the movies, only to forget about the movie or suddenly become experts on Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life and politics after watching one obscure film created by the Indian industry and fronted by a Sikh face? See, e.g., ibid. See also State of Punjab, “Application for re-framing of points of substance,” Volume II-Document 1, “Insight to some of the martyred police officers,” National Human Rights Commission, Reference Case No. 1/97/NHRC, received August 26, 2002. Copy on file with Ensaaf. California city names park after Sikh human rights advocate". NBC News. 6 September 2017 . Retrieved 13 November 2019. Khalra was last seen in September 1995, washing his car in front of his house in Amritsar. Six Punjab police officials were later convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for Khalra's abduction and murder. Our shaheeds left us with so much, not only in their embodiment but materially with speeches, words, and direct action and fight for Khalistan . In many ways, we will never know some details about Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life, including those private, intimate moments when he sat at his desk and translated dreams for the Panth from his consciousness onto paper with a pen or what he endured in the last moments of his life.

The story of Jaswant Singh Khalra, excerpted from Mallika Kaur’s book ‘Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper’.

In 2017, the City Council of Fresno, California, approved the resolution to rename Victoria Park after the Sikh human rights advocate Jaswant Singh Khalra. High Court Case Filed against Former Police Chief KPS Gill for Murder of Human Rights Activist Jaswant Singh Khalra,” Ensaaf press release, September 6, 2006, http://www.ensaaf.org/docs/gillpetition.php (accessed April 13, 2007). KPS Gill, “By other means: The litigation weapon against the police and the state,” Frontline, June 27, 1997, p.115.

Answer: At that time I rang his colleagues. Then we met IG Bhatti and told him that this is the work of Ajit Singh Sandhu as he had been threatening us. IG Bhatti said, "What right do they have to kidnap a man from our area, by the evening I will find him." But IG Bhatti did not do anything. According to the U.S. Census’ 2015 American Community Survey, approximately 10,000 people of Asian Indian descent live in Fresno. This 2016 image, taken from Google Street View, shows the newly renamed Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra Park in Fresno, California. We cannot escape the reality that India abducted, tortured and assassinated Bhai Jaswant Singh Ji in 1995 . These conditions should not be understood in the past tense, but ongoing, as Jagtar Singh ‘Jaggi’ and other political prisoners are confined in prison, Deep Sidhu’s death evoked naare of "ਇਹ ਸਾਡੀ ਮਜਬੂਰੀ ਏ, ਖਾਲਿਸਤਾਨ ਜ਼ਰੂਰੀ ਏ" and a yet another video of a young Sikh man being brutalised as a mob stood by goes viral. The newly rumoured movie will undoubtedly water down and distract from the ongoing realities and struggle. The ignited momentum amongst Sikhs in Punjab and the diaspora raises questions about the film’s intentions and inherent limitations in providing substance yet taking up space as it distorts and manufactures narratives.Punjab Cops Convicted of 1995 Murder of Activist Khalra". Ensaaf. Archived from the original on 23 November 2006 . Retrieved 25 January 2007. We met the wife of Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra, Bibi Paramjit Kaur and asked her many questions, Bibi Paramjit Kaur answered every question and thanks to her we can now share the information about Bhai Sahib, a fearless Sikh human activist, with the Sikh nation.

Due to the nature of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life and death, and the reality of India, the Indian film industry is only capable of recreating, mutilating, and co-opting a story about Khalistan and the Sikh struggle against India, in an attempt to infiltrate and divert ongoing discourse and rising Sikh consciousness.BBC News, “Leaders ‘incited’ anti-Sikh riots,” August 8, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4130962.stm (accessed August 13, 2007). Unidentified” pyres burnt aplenty; the first registers Jaswant viewed listed over 300 cremations from just the Durgiana Mandir cremation ground in 1992. “Jaswant Singh proceeded with great care. With him was Jaspal Singh Dhillon, the chairman of the Akali Dal, Human Rights Wing. They engaged the crematoria attendants in banter, getting them the usual chaa-paani, and as they were busy eating, the team photocopied all the records of those supposedly missing.” The rumouring wind carried Khalra and Dhillon to other crematoria in their district, where they obtained similar records. By January, they had readied a list of illegal cremations from three crematoria and knew they must publicise it soon.

Part of the difficulty were the men in uniform who kept appearing, asking Paramjit to change her testimony. Then there were the aspersions against Paramjit’s testimony, including the filing of a 1998 police case against her, by the earlier whistleblowing police officer Kuldip Singh, who charged that Paramjit and other Khalra supporters had coerced his statement against the accused [police officers]. Later, Kuldip Singh would testify before the Court about how the accused police officers had made him register this false case after detaining him, visiting his in-laws, offering inducements (including weapons), and threatening him and his wife. The Court would dismiss the case against Paramjit. On September 6, 1995, Khalra disappeared and a case of murder, abduction and criminal conspiracy was registered on the complaint of his wife, Paramjit Kaur. With an accusatory finger pointed at the police, Khalra made it his life’s work to compile a list of all the unlawful deaths and disappearances that took place after Bluestar. According to his research, Punjab Police killed over 2,000 police personnel who disobeyed their techniques in addition to participating in 25,000 illegal killings and cremations. During the counterinsurgency in Punjab, the Indian government also rejected reports by international human rights organizations on widespread abuses. In a letter issued to Amnesty International that denied the group permission to visit Punjab, the Indian Embassy stated: “The only turmoil in Punjab are the acts of violence by terrorists who have been indiscriminate in their butchery of innocents of all communities.” The letter further stressed India’s sovereignty and its antipathy to foreign interference in its domestic affairs. 38 In response to the 1991 Asia Watch report Punjab in Crisis, the Indian government denied the abuses, stating that it did not tolerate any violations of the law. 39 Khalra's daughter said that, as a member of a community that is a minority both in India and in the U.S., she feels it is important for Sikh youth to have people who have made a difference in the community to look up to.He asked how he would know if Piara Singh was there or whether the body was disposed of down a river or into a ditch?” US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—1990: India,” p. 1437; US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—1992: India,” p.1133. Article 356 of the Indian Constitution empowers the President and Parliament to bypass the elected state government and administer the state if the governor determines that “the Government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.” To honour Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh, the conditions that produced his shaheedi must be central. These conditions are nowhere more visible than in the histories surrounding the police abduction, torture, rape and murder of Shaheed Bibi Amandeep Kaur Ji . Bibi Ji was not a prominent movement figure or an activist, but her story is no less significant. From her story we learn what Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh saw, felt, and wanted us to see and feel .