Under Sl. No. 3/008, the list identifies the 10 May 1987 cremation of Virsa Singh, s/o Harnam Singh, r/o Sursingh, carried out by Inspector Madan Gopal of Harike police station under FIR No. 59/87. The postmortem report is marked as JSC?33/87 and the cause of death is given as “police encounter”.

The Committee has the following information in this case through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01582. The main informant is the victim’s brother Mukhtar Singh.

Virsa Singh, s/o Harnam Singh and Gurdial Kaur, was a resident of Patti Chandu Ki in Sur Singh village under Bhikhiwind police station in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. Twenty-three year old Virsa Singh had abandoned his education after the VIIth standard to join a Nihang Sikh order. Virsa Singh stayed with this group and very rarely visited his family for short periods.

In the first week of May 1987, the Amritsar police arrested Virsa Singh and two of his associates, Satnam Singh, r/o Chakk Walia and Mangal Singh, r/o Gazal, from a house in the city. The family members did not receive any information about Virsa Singh’s situation until a Punjabi newspaper called Jagbani reported his killing on 28 August 1987, along with Mangal Singh and Satnam Singh, in an alleged police encounter near village Nabipur under Harike police station. The newspaper report, based on a police handout, clearly identified all the persons killed in the so-called “encounter”. Satnam Singh was identified as the son of Vasakha Singh from Chakk Walia village under Khemkaran police station, and Mangal Singh as the son of Sarma Singh from Gazal village also under Khemkaran police station. By the time the newspaper published the reports, the police had already carried out the cremations.

The CBI’s list of identified cremations only shows Virsa Singh’s cremation. Inspite of the complete identification available in the newspaper report, the CBI chose to place the two other cremations in its partially identified list. Under Sl. Nos. 04/07 and 05/09, the partially identified list shows the 10 May 1987 cremations of Mangal Singh and Satnam Singh, carried out by Inspector Madan Gopal of Harike police station under the same FIR No. 59/97. However, in contradiction with the information in the newspaper report, the list mentions Mangal Singh’s village as Bhai Ladhoo.

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