SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 30, 2011 – A coalition of Californian Sikhs and South Asian minorities will seek justice for Indian state atrocities at a Saturday, February 11 fundraiser at 3pm at Raja Indian Cuisine in Hayward. Speakers will include attorney Rajwinder Singh Bains and Navkiran Kaur Khalra, daughter of the late Jaswant Singh Khalra.

As a human rights activist in Punjab, India, Mr. Khalra documented the secret killings of tens of thousands of Punjabi Sikhs by Punjab Police. In 1995, police abducted him in retaliation for his activism. He was secretly imprisoned, tortured and killed. His family got some justice for his murder in November 2011, when Mr. Bains persuaded India’s Supreme Court to uphold lifetime sentences for five officers involved in Mr. Khalra’s murder.

“We are on the front-lines of an information war between truth and lies,” said Arvin Valmuci, communications coordinator for Organization for Minorities of India, a group sponsoring the event. “New Delhi continues to suppress and brutalize the 99 percent of common people, especially those from minority ethnic and religious groups. The victory of justice will be achieved by those who refuse to be silenced and speak truth no matter the consequences. Jaswant Singh Khalra, a giant of truth, is our role-model.”

In the harsh atmosphere of 1990s-era India, many Sikhs were disappeared by Indian security forces. Secretly arrested and held without charges, attorney or trial, these Sikhs were tortured and then killed in custody. To conceal evidence of the deaths, police illegally cremated most of the bodies. Inspired to investigate the disappearance of some close colleagues, Mr. Khalra discovered official records documenting the illegal killings. He soon pieced together evidence that at least 25,000 Sikhs had been secretly killed by Indian police over a 10-year period.

On September 6, 1995, police seized Mr. Khalra from the driveway of his home. He was arrested in full view of multiple witnesses who recognized and identified several notorious, high-ranking police officers as the kidnappers. Nevertheless, Indian officials initially denied Mr. Khalra was imprisoned. A police official later testified in court, however, that the activist was brutally tortured for over a month, shot dead by police and abandoned in a canal.

After a 16-year court battle, Mr. Bains won the conviction and life imprisonment of five officers involved in the murder. The tireless attorney is now seeking conviction of Punjab’s former Directer General of Police (DGP) K.P.S. Gill, saying: “The High Court must investigate K.P.S. Gill’s role in the execution of Jaswant Singh Khalra.” Mr. Bains will discuss these efforts on February 11 as he speaks to Hayward gathering via satellite.

Proceeds from the event will fund Ensaaf, an organization seeking justice for mass state crimes in India. “Ensaaf is doing today in Punjab,” says Mr. Bains, “what others had given up: bringing hope to victims and challenging perpetrators through critical legal inputs.” Ensaaf produced Reduced to Ashes (2003) and “Twenty Years of Impunity” (2005), works which deal with India’s failure to provide justice for the Sikh and other minority victims of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaigns.

“In modern India, the country’s minorities remain chosen targets for false encounter killings and custodial murders by police and other security forces,” said Mr. Valmuci. “In 2010, the Asian Human Rights Commission warned that torture ‘is practiced in every police station in the country.’ The world may have reached the 21st century, but the ruling elite in New Delhi govern India with the delicacy of the stone age. For the sake of mercy, of justice, of truth and of humanity, we must bring liberty to India.”