Jaswant Singh Khalra, a Punjab-based human rights activist who died in 1995, has been in the news recently. The trailer of the film Punjab’ 95 was released today in which Diljit Dosanjh plays the lead character of Jaswant Singh Khalra.
Jaswant Singh Khalra was a Punjab-based human rights activist who suddenly disappeared in 1995. The Punjab Police first regarded Khalra’s death as a suicide, but in 2005, six Punjab police officers were found guilty and given seven years in prison for kidnapping and killing Khalra.
Paramjit Kaur Khalra, the wife of the late Jaswant Singh Khalra, carried forward his legacy and is a human rights defender associated with Khalra Mission Organization. This NGO raises issues of the common masses associated with pre and post-1984 riots cases.
She belongs to Moga and has a Bachelor of Library Science from GNDU, Amritsar, and MA in Punjabi from Punjabi University, Patiala.
In 1999, she stood for Lok Sabha elections from Tarn Taran and lost. Ten years later, in 2019 she stood from the Khadoor Sahib constituency and lost again.
Khalra’s daughter Navkiran Kaur works in Milpitas, California as a Senior Manager at Western Digital. His son Janmeet Singh Khalra lives in Calgary, Canada, and is a human rights defender there representing concerns of the Sikh diaspora and other communities.
She got married to Jaswant Singh Khalra in 1981 and had two children Janmeet Singh and daughter Navkiran Kaur. In 1985, the family moved from Khalra to Amritsar, and that is when Jaswant Singh realized the horrors of the anti–Sikh riots and became a human rights activist.
Khalra made it his life’s motive to compile a list of all the unlawful deaths and disappearances that took place after Operation Bluestar. According to his research, Punjab Police killed over 2,000 police personnel who disobeyed their techniques in addition to participating in 25,000 illegal killings and cremations.
The role of Jaswant Singh Khalra was crucial in unearthing proof that the police had kidnapped, killed, and cremated thousands of unidentified people during the 1984 Sikh riots days in Punjab.
The Punjab Police first regarded Khalra’s death as a suicide, but in 2005, six Punjab police officers were found guilty and given seven years in prison for kidnapping and killing Khalra.