CAT/C/46/D/336/2008
asylum, reasoning that it could not find any good reasons to believe that the Indian security
forces would consider the complainants as dangerous enemies of the Indian State.
2.5
The complainants have been living peacefully in Switzerland since 1995. Two of the
complainants have founded families. They are very active in the Sikh community. Karan
Singh is the President of the first Sikh temple built in Switzerland. Mr. Harminder Singh
Khalsa is the Vice-President of the Sikh temple. The complainants submit that they
continued to be involved in political activities during their stay in Switzerland and that the
Indian authorities are well aware of that. Karan Singh participated as observer in the 56th
session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, but was forced to leave early,
because Indian Security Service people followed and harassed him. At the same time his
relatives in India were harassed by the police. In 1998 Harminder Singh Khalsa participated
in a conference which was opposed by the Indian government and reports of that appeared
in a newspaper. In 2003, at a demonstration against the Indian Government in Bern, Karan
Singh gave an anti-governmental speech. In 2007 a human rights conference was held in
the new Sikh temple in which two of the complainants participated. The participants held a
demonstration in front of the UN building in Geneva. Afterwards the parents of the
complainants were harassed by the police and were warned of “dire consequences” if they
did not stop their sons from organising anti- Indian rallies.
The complaint
3.1
The complainants submit that their deportation from Switzerland to India would
constitute a violation of article 3 of the Convention against Torture because they would face
serious threats to their health and lives. They claim that the Indian security forces still want
to prosecute them for having hijacked two Indian planes. To support this allegation, the
complainants submit that on 22 June 1995, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation wrote
a letter to the Canadian immigration authorities, requesting their assistance in capturing two
of the participants in the 1984 airplane’s hijacking.
3.2
The complainants also indicate that two members of the group who participated in
the 1984 hijacking, and who had been acquitted by the Pakistan Special Court in 1986 and
released from prison, were killed by the Indian Security Forces in mysterious circumstances
when they returned to India in 1990. They provide affidavits of relatives of the two
members killed and refer to the 7 March 2007 judgment of the Swiss Asylum Appeal
Commission in the case of Harminder Singh Khalsa, which allegedly recognizes the death
of those two former hijackers.
3.3
The complainants also refer to the case of Mr. K.S. who had also participated in the
hijacking of a civilian Indian aircraft in 1984. After having served a 12 years’ imprisonment
sentence in India, a month after being released from prison, his dead body which showed
marks of injuries was found in a canal in a village in Rajasthan and a magistrate inquiry
concluded that he had been tortured prior to being thrown in the canal. The inquiry did not,
however, indentify the perpetrator(s) and the death of Mr. K.S.was considered irrelevant by
the Swiss asylum authorities.
3.4
The complainants submit that Indian security forces are actively searching for them
because they have a high profile and their names appear constantly in newspapers reporting
that their asylum claims had been rejected in Switzerland and that they would be soon
deported to India.4 They maintain that they submitted to the Swiss authorities copies of a
4
The complainants submit copies of articles (in translation) in the newspaper Daily Ajit Jalandbar
dated 23 April 1003 and 18 May 2003; the first quotes the complainants’ names and report that the
Swiss government ordered their deportation; the second reports that the complainants have gone
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