Jaswant Singh Khalra: 31 Years On, the Story of Abduction and Justice Quest

Thirty-one years after his abduction in 1995, human rights crusader Jaswant Singh Khalra has returned to public discourse following the removal and banning of his biopic 'Satluj' from an OTT platform in India on July 3, 2025. The film was also taken down internationally within 48 hours.

Khalra, known as the 'guardian of unclaimed bodies,' was 42 when he went missing. He had been documenting alleged illegal cremations of thousands of individuals during Punjab's militancy period, after police had labelled them 'unclaimed or unidentified.'

His disappearance prompted a Supreme Court-ordered Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into both his abduction and the alleged illegal cremations. In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld life imprisonment for five Punjab policemen, including a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), for Khalra's murder.

The case reached the Supreme Court through a telegram sent by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) President Gurcharan Singh Tohra on September 7, 1995, a day after Khalra was abducted from his home in Amritsar. Treating the telegram as a habeas corpus petition, the Supreme Court issued notices to the Punjab home secretary, Director General of Police (DGP), and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Amritsar.

Khalra's wife, Paramjit Kaur Khalra, also filed a habeas corpus plea under Article 32 of the Constitution. She stated that her husband was investigating 'unclaimed dead bodies' and police excesses, and she believed he was abducted at the instance of then SSP Tarn Taran, Ajit Singh Sandhu.

A key piece of evidence was a press note issued by Khalra and his associate Jaspal Singh Dhillon on January 16, 1995, which formed the basis for the CBI investigation. The press note, placed before the Supreme Court, revealed that the police regularly brought bodies to cremation grounds, declaring them unclaimed, with only firewood receipts as records. It noted that in Amritsar district alone, from June 1, 1984, to end of 1994, about 2,000 bodies were cremated as unclaimed. During the first year of Chief Minister Beant Singh's government, 300 bodies were brought to the Durgiana Mandir cremation ground; 41 died of bullet injuries, while no reason was recorded for the rest.

Khalra and his wife maintained that at least 25,000 such disappearances occurred across Punjab during the militancy period.