Under Sl. Nos. 32/75 and 33/76, the list identifies two 7 May 1989 cremations carried out by ASI Baljeet Singh of Jhabbal police station. They are of [1] Hardeep Singh, s/o Raghubir Singh, r/o village Gago Bua, and [2] Gurdev Singh, s/o Darshan Singh, r/o village Tatle. There is no mention of the FIR No. The postmortem reports are marked as AK 12/89 and AK 13/89. The cause of death is given to be “CRPF encounter”.

The Committee has the following information in these cases through its Incident-Report Form Nos. CCDP/01391 and 01580. The main informants are Hardeep’s father Raghbir Singh and Gurdev’s brother Avtar Singh.

Hardeep Singh of Gaggo Booha village, Patti Masoor Ki, under Jhabbal police station in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district, was a young, unmarried man of 20, who used to help his father Raghbir Singh with his agricultural work. He did not belong to any political party or group and had no record of conflict with the police. He knew other young Sikhs in the village involved in the Sikh militant movement for Khalistan and sometimes talked to them.

On 20 April 1989, Hardeep was staying at his aunt Charan Kaur’s house in village Jora when the Tarn Taran police, jointly with the CRPF, raided the village and took him into custody. Since Hardeep was not a resident of the village, the police officials decided to verify his antecedents and promised to release him after making inquiries. The next day, Charan Kaur informed her brother Raghbir Singh and other family members about the arrest, and asked them to persuade the authorities to release their son. Raghbir Singh, along with several village elders, met several police officials of Tarn Taran who expressed ignorance, but promised to help in tracing him.

On 07 May 1989, Raghbir Singh was in the town of Jhabbal when he learnt from a shopkeeper about a police encounter near village Sohal, under Jhabbal police station, in which two young Sikhs, including one from Gaggo Booha, had been killed. Immediately, Raghbir Singh went to the Jhabbal police station where Assistant Sub-Inspector Kashmir Singh told him that the bodies had been sent to Tarn Taran for postmortem. At the hospital in Tarn Taran, he was told that the police had already taken the bodies for their cremation, and when he reached the cremation ground, the CRPF personnel did not let him enter. The next day, ASI Kashmir Singh at Jhabbal Police Station told Raghbir Singh that one of the boys killed in the encounter was indeed his son, Hardeep Singh.

Raghbir Singh also found out that the second person killed in the “encounter” was 18-year old Gurdev Singh, s/o Darshan Singh, r/o “Kamalpuriya” in village Tatle, post office Padhri Kalan, under Jhabbal police station, in Patti subdivision of Amritsar district.

Gurdev was the youngest of Darshan Singh’s five sons and three daughters and, like Hardeep, used to work on his father’s land. He had no political or militant background and no case had ever been registered against him. He was a baptized Sikh and conspicuously devout.

Early in the morning of 29 April 1989, around 7 a.m., a group of CRPF officers led by Inpsector Tiwari raided Gurdev’s house and arrested him along with his two brothers, Balkar Singh and Avtar Singh, and two of his cousins, Sukhdev Singh and Gurbhag Singh, sons of Sulakhan Singh. Inspector Tiwari told Darshan Singh that he was taking all of the arrested boys to the police post at Sur Singh, but he actually took them to the CRPF’s local headquarters at Kutcha-Pucca.

A group of officers started interrogating Gurdev, accusing him of belonging to the militant underground and of maintaining a cache of arms for terrorist actions. He was asked to confess, and then the officers began to torture him. His brothers heard him screaming, but the torture did not relent even as Gurdev continued to deny the allegations. After some time, the police brought Hardeep Singh, s/o Raghbir Singh of Gaggo Booha village into Gurdev’s interrogation room and was made to repeat the allegation that he possessed weapons. As Gurdev continued to deny these allegations, the police increased the severity of his torture. In the end, he collapsed unconscious. His brothers later noticed some policemen dragging Gurdev away to a different cell in which he was locked up. The joints of his right hand and left ankle appeared fractured.

Around 11 a.m., the family members of all of the brothers and their cousins, accompanied by several village elders, reached the CRPF post at Kutcha-Pucca. Inspector Tiwari ordered the release of Sukhdev and Gurbhag, sons of Sulakhan Singh, and handed them over to the members of the village council. But Gurdev and his brothers were not released. Some hours later, some CRPF personnel took them in their vehicle to the CIA Staff Interrogation Center at Tarn Taran. Gurdev was unable to move and had to be physically lifted into the vehicle. At the Interrogation Center, Gurdev was taken out of the vehicle but his two brothers were ordered to remain seated. They were released around 7 p.m., that evening.

Meanwhile, the family members accompanied by the head of the village council and other elders had gone to look for Gurdev Singh and his brothers at Tarn Taran’s Sadar police station. The SHO accused them of helping militants and ordered them locked up. They were released many hours later when a senior Akali leader Major Singh Uboke, former Member of Parliament, intervened.

Over the next days, Gurdev’s family, assisted by members of the village council, continued to meet various police officials to pursue his release. They received vague assurances that he would be released after the completion of the investigation.

Early in the morning of 7 May 1989, the police staged the “encounter” at a lonely spot between Sohal and Bhuchar Kalan villages in which Gurdev and Hardeep were declared killed. The story released to the press said that both of them were crossing from Pakistan, with a consignment of arms and ammunition and riding a tractor, when, challenged by the police, they opened fire. The terrorists got killed, the story claimed, when the police had to retaliate and fire. The police claimed to have recovered AK-47 rifles, assault rifles, rocket launchers and bombs from the site of the encounter. On 8 May 1989, all of the Punjab newspapers dutifully reported the story.

The family members collected Gurdev’s ashes from the cremation ground the next day. ')"

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