***************UPDATE**************

Please note this fund has now closed as we have met the target. All money donated will be used for the medical costs as per the below.

The treatment was a huge success and Bibi Jaspal Kaur sends her regards to all those who have supported her. 

If you would like to donate towards other cases, including prisoner and family welfare please go to www.justgiving.com/sopw

Please note any further donations on this page will be used for the welfare of other prisoners and their families.

For any further information please email info@prisonerwelfare.com

---------------------------------------------------

In April 2011, the Sikh Organisation for Prisoners Welfare facilitated the release of Avtar Singh Bheora. Avtar Singh has been a victim of police brutality and torture for over twenty years. He was first arrested on the 12 April 1988 and was charged with twenty TADA offences, eighteen throughout Punjab and the remaining two in Delhi. For over two years he was held illegally by the Punjab Police and tortured, until being sent to the infamous Tihar Jail in Delhi (June 1990). He was transferred from Tihar to Amristar Prison on the 17 May 1997, and released on bail on 12 September 1997.

He and his pregnant wife were then arrested on 20 March 2003 on false charges of homicide and kidnapping and both sent to Karnal Prison. His wife, Jaspal Kaur, later gave birth to a baby boy, Gurjeet Singh, in prison. The newborn baby and his parents were finally acquitted on the 10 October 2006.

This was not the end of their ordeal, Avtar Singh was on the 22 July 2009 picked up by the Police and charged with the crime of escaping from jail in 1995 (while he was in jail). SOPW became aware of his case and instructed a legal team to challenge the false case in Court. Eventually when the case reached the High Court the Judge chastised the police, as the prison authorities confirmed Avtar Singh was incarcerated during the period in which he was alleged to have escaped. He was duly acquitted and returned to his family.

Unfortunately, following the dozens of fabricated cases placed on Avtar Singh in Courts throughout India for the past two decades, whilst bringing up four children on her own, and her spell in prison, with the added torture of giving birth and raising her son in jail, Jaspal Kaur has suffered both psychologically and physically. She has a variety of ailments, the most serious being a kidney infection, which requires urgent medical attention. The initial medical cost is £1500.

We appeal to the Sangat to please help Bhai Sahib and his family.