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the Sikhs in Punjab. He discovered files that contained the name,
age, address of those who had been killed and cremated by the
State Police in Amritsar. The list was of 6000 dead bodies. Out of
these 2097 were identified in the records.
Khalra and his team exposed these cases in the national and
international media, giving the estimate of people killed by Punjab
police to be around 25,000, most of these were young Sikh boys who
were abducted from their homes and who never returned.
All his investigations were perceived as a threat by the police
officials involved in the human rights abuses. Khalra started
receiving threats from the Police that it won’t be hard for them to
make him disappear.
In 1995, he traveled to Canada and presented reports of human
rights abuses in India. His life was in danger in India and he was told
not to go back, but he had work to do in India on behalf of the
families of Sikhs who were murdered. He returned to Amritsar in
July 1995.
On September 6, 1995, while washing his car in front of his house,
Khalra "disappeared.” He was kept in illegal detention, killed and his
body disposed of in a canal.
‘Abduction and Murder of Jaswant Singh Khalra’ case was tried in
the Supreme Court of India. They found that the claims Khalra
made about the Sikhs who had disappeared were accurate. The
Court convicted 7 police officers for jail time and 4 were given life
in prison. But KPS Gill was not charged.
Khalra inspired thousands of young Sikhs to become more active in
their communities. Human Rights Law Networks (HRLN) -India and
World Sikh Organization (WSO-Canada) opened up a Khalra Center
in New Delhi in November 2011, with a mission to ‘Defend the
Defenders’. He was recognized as “An important Defender of Human
Rights”. The Sikhs of Fresno had the City Council of Fresno rename
Victoria Park as “Jaswant Singh Khalra Neighborhood Park”. The
Council Member Oliver Baines said, "Jaswant Singh Khalra for
Sikh History and Gurmat Sikhia Book 6 2020 Edition Page 48
