KMC to expose ''big names'' behind mass cremations

Chandigarh, Oct 15 (UNI) The Khalra Mission Committee (KMC), which exposed the illegal mass cremations during terrorism in Punjab, today announced that it would further expose the ''big names'' behind such human rights violations while making it an election issue during the Vidhan Sabha polls.

''We will expose the names of certain big politicians and other people, who had been in administrative power, among the masses before the polling in the state,'' KMC chief patron Dalbir Singh said at a press conference here.

Taking a cue from the compensation announced by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for families of the victims who had been eliminated and illegally cremated by Punjab police, he said the bigger task of probing such killings remained in the docks.

''The so-called relief announced by the NHRC provides legal justification for killing of a person by paying a price, but there is a bigger task of probing such killings which remained to be done by us (KMC).

''What about the killings in whole of Punjab?'' Mr Dalbir Singh said, reaction sharply to the NHRC's directions to the Punjab government to monetarily compensate the next of kin of 1,051 ''unidentified'' human bodies out of a list of 2,097 dug out from three cremation grounds by KMC a decade ago.

Human rights activist Late Jaswant Singh Khalra, before his disappearance and alleged killing at the hands of senior Punjab police officers, had traced out 2,097 dead bodies of mainly Sikhs, which the police claimed as unidentified, about a decade back. The matter had been taken up at the level of the United Nations and its allied human rights organisations, he pointed out.

As many as 86 criminal cases along with 1750 complaints of similar nature were pending with the NHRC in 2005.

As many as 2,097 illegally cremated ''unidentified'' bodies had been dug out from three cremation grounds and enlisted by the KMC in Amritsar district alone in mid-1990s.

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