Under Sl. Nos. 24/54 and 25/55, the list identifies two 5 November 1988 cremations carried out by SHO Dara Singh of Harike police station, under FIR No. 193/88. They are of: [1] Karam Singh, s/o Teja Singh, r/o Durgapur and [2] Balwinder Singh, s/o Darbara Singh, r/o Warian. The postmortem reports are marked as VKA 131/88 and VKA 132/88. The cause of death is given as “police encounter”.

The Committee has the following information in these cases through its Incident-Report Form Nos. CCDP/01622 and 01623. The main informants are Karam Singh’s widow Balwinder Kaur and Balwinder Singh’s brother-in-law Surjit Singh.

Twenty-eight year old Karam Singh, s/o Teja Singh and Jagir Kaur, was a farmer from village Dargapur under Sarhalli Kalan police station in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. The eldest of six brothers in the family, Karam Singh was married to Balwinder Kaur with a daughter, now 20, and two sons, 19 and 17. Karam Singh had no political background. However, in the wake of Operation Blue Star, Karam Singh began to express views in favor of an independent Sikh State. The police became suspicious and started raiding his house. Karam Singh, fearing torture, deserted his home. The police picked up his family members, pressuring them under torture to produce him for an interrogation. They did not know how to contact Karam Singh, but the police pressure did not relent.

The correct name of the cremated person identified in the CBI’s list, under Sl. No. 25/55, as Balwinder Singh is Baldev Singh. Fifteen-year old Baldev was the youngest of three brothers born to Darbara Singh and Surjit Kaur, a poor family of landless peasants living at village Variah, post office Naushehra Pannuan under Sarhalli Kalan police station in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. Because of economic harship, Baldev had to give up school at the primary level and help his father cultivate other people’s land as a hired laborer and sometimes as a sharecropper. Baldev had no connections with the militant movement and had never been arrested or interrogated by the police. Baldev Singh and Karam Singh were not personally acquainted. However, both of them ended up getting killed in the same “encounter”.

Sarhalli police raided Karam Singh’s house in the last week of October 1988 and took his brother Sukhdev Singh into their custody. They forced him to come along with them to village Kawan under Goindwal police station where Karam Singh’s in-laws lived. Karam Singh, who had taken shelter with his in-laws, was arrested along with two of his brothers-in-law, Malkeet Singh and Avtar Singh. The police released Sukhdev Singh and brought Karam Singh and his brothers-in-law to Sarhalli police station. Four days later, Avtar Singh and Malkeet Singh were released after their family members paid SHO Gurdev Singh a bribe of Rs. 10,000. The police did not release Karam Singh, whom they had tortured brutally in the presence of his brothers-in-law. His family could not obtain direct information about what happened to him after the police released Malkeet Singh and Avtar Singh from illegal custody.

The family members failed to take note of a newspaper report that described Karam Singh’s killing in a supposed encounter, along with another “militant”, and continued to visit SHO Gurdev Singh of Sarhalli police station in the hope of getting him released. The SHO knew what had happened but, instead of revealing it, sardonically reminded them of their earlier protestations under interrogation that they had nothing to do with Karam Singh and the police were free to shoot him at sight. Towards the end of November 1988, some distant relatives and village elders were able to convince Karam Singh’s parents that their son was no more and to carry out his last rites although they had neither attended the cremation nor collected his ashes.

Baldev Singh was the second “militant” killed along with Karam Singh in the “encounter” that had been staged, according to the newspaper reports, during the night of 04 November 1988 near village Marar under Harike police station. In reality, Baldev Singh and Karam Singh had never met and had nothing in common except their bleak fate. In the third week of October 1988, SHO Gurdev Singh of Sarhalli police station had picked up Baldev Singh from his house along with his brother Balwinder Singh and had them locked up in separate cells. Balwinder was not so severely tortured, but he remained petrified by the screaming of his brother, which he heard for hours every night after officers took him out for interrogation. This went on for several days. But he was not able to see or talk to Baldev.

Darbara Singh, the father of the two boys, had been meeting the SHO of Sarhalli police station to plead with him for their release. Towards the end of October, the head of the village council met Darbara Singh to convey a message from the SHO that his sons would be released if he paid Rs. 60,000. Darbara Singh was a poor landless peasant and it was impossible for him to raise such a huge amount of money.

A few days later, Balwinder was released, but Baldev remained in police custody. According to Balwinder, Harike Police had taken his brother away the night before his release. The SHO talked in evasive terms even as Darbara Singh continued to meet him over the next days to ask about his second son, sometimes mumbling about the CRPF having taken him for questioning and other times saying something about his case being under consideration by his senior officers. Gradually, the SHO became more abrasive, asking Darbara Singh what if he had “not released the other son also”.

Soon, the family found out that the police had killed Baldev in an “encounter” near village Marar under Harike police station. Darbara Singh went to Marar village to ask the villagers about the incident and found out that earlier in November, the police had come to the village with two young Sikhs and had killed them after staging the drama of an encounter. At the site of the “encounter”, Darbara Singh found a woolen shawl that was on his son’s body when the police had taken him away. He came back to his village with Baldev’s shawl that the police had left behind after killing him and went on to hold a religious ceremony to mark his son’s death, although he had neither attended the cremation nor collected his ashes.

Darbara Singh was not in a position to initiate any action against the killers of his son. But together with his family, he decided to leave the village, which would not let him forget his scourge.

Baldev’s sister and her husband Surjit Singh, who live in the neighboring village of Kheda, near Naushehra Pannuan, provided this information.

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