Under Sl. No. 23/53, the list identifies the 22 September 1988 cremation of Shinda, s/o Sarwan Singh Jat, r/o Sur Singh under Bhikhiwind police station, carried out by SHO Mohinder Singh of Valtoha police station under FIR No. 123/88. The postmortem report is marked as SSA 38/88 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/01583. The main informant is Harbans Kaur, the victim’s mother.

The actual name of the cremated person identified by the CBI by the alias Shinda was Sawinder Singh. The list also wrongly identifies his father as Sarwan Singh. The correct name is Swaran Singh. They were residents of Patti Mahna Ki, village Sur Singh Wala, under Bhikhiwind police station, in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. Unmarried at 25, Sawinder had been outraged by the Indian army’s attack on the Golden Temple of Amritsar in June 1984 and became sympathetic to the militant movement. He went underground in 1986 or 1987 after the police began to raid his house with the intention of arresting him. After Sawinder deserted home, the police began to harass his family members, picking them up and holding them in illegal detention for information. His father Swaran Singh was brutally tortured and became physically disabled.

On 21 September 1988, Valtoha police, led by SHO Mohinder Singh, raided a house in Poonia village and arrested Sawinder Singh and his associate Jagir Singh. The police took both of them out to the fields in the outskirts of the village and shot them dead. Later that evening, the police informed Sawinder’s family members about the “encounter”, and after the identification and the postmortem of the dead body, handed it over to them for cremation, which was carried out at the village.

The family members made detailed inquiries at village Poonia about the alleged “encounter” and discovered the true sequence of events. The newspaper reports about the “encounter”, based on information given out by the police, identified both Sawinder Singh and Jagir Singh of Rasoolpur village by their names. However, the CBI’s list of identified cremations only shows Sawinder’s cremation, and it states that the cremation was carried out by the Valtoha police at Patti whereas the actual cremation occurred at Sur Singh Wala village. The list does not show the second cremation of Jagir Singh. The two other lists of partially identified and unidentified cremations, prepared by the CBI, also do not exhibit any other cremation carried out by the police the same day.

Sawinder’s father Swaran Singh, who had earlier suffered brutal torture, remained physically disabled and bed-ridden and died a few years later.

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