Diljit Dosanjh is playing the lead role in Punjab ’95, a film about human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra’s disappearance.
Jaswant Sinngh Khalra Khalra was kidnapped and taken to Jhabal Police Station on September 6, 1995, while he was washing his automobile in front of his residence.
The police have denied ever arresting or holding Khalra, despite witnesses making statements accusing them and naming Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, the director general of the Punjab Police, as a conspirator. Additionally, it has been stated that the police were unaware of his whereabouts.
In 1996, the Central Bureau of Investigation discovered proof that he was being kept at a Tarn Taran police station and recommended that nine Punjab police officers be charged with murder and kidnapping. The alleged murderers were held without charges for eleven years, despite the fact that Senior Superintendent of Police Ajit Singh was one of the suspects.
Despite the fact that one of the suspects, Senior Superintendent of Police Ajit Singh Sandhu, was killed in 1997, those accused of his murder were held without charges for ten years. His murder, though, was made to look like a fake one so that it looked like suicide. Six Punjab police officers were found guilty and given seven years in prison on November 18, 2005, for kidnapping and killing Khalra.
On October 16, 2007, a division bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, presided over by Justices Mehtab Singh Gill and A N Jindal, increased the sentences of four defendants—Satnam Singh, Surinder Pal Singh, Jasbir Singh, and Prithipal Singh—to life in prison.
The Supreme Court of India rejected the appeal against the four defendants’ life sentences on April 11, 2011, harshly denouncing the atrocities carried out by the Punjab Police during the unrest era.
Paramjit Kaur Khalra, Jaswant Singh’s wife who is a well-known human rights advocate is carrying on her husband’s work, and crusade.