Karaz Singh, s/o Suba Singh, r/o Bhure Kane, and [2] Ramesh Singh, s/o Sher Singh, r/o Bhode Khurd

Under Sl. Nos. 27/64 and 28/65, the list identifies two 21 December 1988 cremations carried out by Tarn Taran’s Sadar police station under FIR No. 163/88. They are of: [1] Karaz Singh, s/o Suba Singh, r/o Bhure Kane, and [2] Ramesh Singh, s/o Sher Singh, r/o Bhode Khurd. The postmortem reports are marked as PS 76/88 and PS 77/88 and the cause of death is given to be “CRPF encounter”.

The Committee has the following information in the case of Karaj Singh through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01664. The main informant is the victim’s mother Balbir Kaur.

Twenty-five year old Karaj Singh, son of Suba Singh and Balbir Kaur, was a resident of village Bhoora Kohna under Khemkaran police station in Patti subdivision of Amritsar district. After completing his matriculation, Karaj Singh obtained a degree called Gyani in the Punjabi language and literature and began to work for the SGPC. Karaj Singh was unmarried.

In 1985, Amritsar police arrested Karaj for interrogation and then implicated him in four criminal cases under TADA. He remained in jail for nearly two and a half years, until September 1988 when the the court acquitted him in two cases and granted release on bail in the other two pending cases against him. After his release, Karaj Singh began to help his father with the agricultural work.

According to Balbir Kaur, on 19 December 1988 morning around 9 a.m., a group of the CRPF officers arrested Karaj Singh near Pakhoke while he was on his way to village Bagarian. Karaj Singh was interrogated and then killed along with Sher Singh, resident of Bagge Khurd village in Ferozepur district, in an encounter staged near village Pakhoke. The CBI’s list wrongly identifies the second person as Ramesh Singh, s/o Sher Singh, r/o Bhode Khurd.

On the 20th December morning, a group of officers from Khemkaran police station came to the house and asked his father Suba Singh to go to the mortuary of Tarn Taran’s civil hospital to identify the dead body. Suba Singh, accompanied by several members of the village council, went to Tarn Taran hospital and identified his son’s dead body. The SHO asked Suba Singh and his companions to come back the next morning to take the body for its cremation. The next morning, Suba Singh and other family members went to Tarn Taran police station to claim the dead body. The relatives of Sher Singh were already at the police station. However, the SHO refused to handover the dead bodies on the ground that they had been recorded as “unclaimed”. The police carried out the cremations at Tarn Taran.

According to Balbir Kaur, in two separate incidents, the police also arrested and killed Karaj Singh’s two cousins. They are:

[1] Balaur Singh, s/o Amrik Singh, resident of Kalia Sakatteran in Patti subdivision of Amritsar district. Balaur Singh was an employee of the Market Committee at Chheharta in Amritsar.
[2] Gurmukh Singh, s/o Jagir Singh, also a resident of Kalia Sakatteran. ')"

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