After 20-year fight for justice, Bibi Khalra set for poll battle

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 12

For 20 years, she fought a long and lonely battle to ensure justice for her husband, who “disappeared” one day while searching for Sikh youths who had gone missing during the militancy period in Punjab.

Now, Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra is giving a new turn to her life as she contests the Lok Sabha elections from Khadoor Sahib as Punjabi Ekta Party candidate.

“From this platform, we hope to tell the world why people like Jaswant Singh Khalra are important for democracy and peace in society,” she says.

The story of Khalra has become an epic tale in the annals of human rights. He roamed from cremation ground to cremation ground and established that in 10 years, the police had cremated over 2,000 “unidentified” bodies in Tarn Taran district alone.

“He dared to pose a question to the mighty state: Who were those people? It was a simple question to which the state didn’t have an answer. They tried to silence his voice but before that, he was able to tell the world about the malpractice of fake encounters,” she says.

Khalra was abducted by Punjab Police officials from his house in Amritsar and murdered in 1995. Six cops were convicted for his murder in 2005, the verdict which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.

It is not for the first time when Bibi Khalra is contesting an election. Earlier, she was a candidate of the Sarb Hind Shiromani Akali Dal floated by Gurcharan Singh Tohra after parting ways with Parkash Singh Badal.

She had unsuccessfully contested from the erstwhile Tarn Taran parliamentary constituency.

Now, she has been given ticket by former AAP leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira’s newly formed Punjabi Ekta Party.

Paramjit Kaur says, “I hope this election will help me in making people understand why it is important to question injustice.”

About Jaswant Khalra

A banker, Jaswant Singh Khalra during the 1990s started finding evidences against the police killing Sikh youth in fake encounters. He was a vocal critic of the then Punjab Police chief KPS Gill. He was picked from his house on September 6, 1995, and was killed on October 27. His body was disposed of in Harike. Six cops were convicted of his murder in 2005. The verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.