Under Sl. Nos. 51/129, 52/130 and 53/131, the CBI list identifies three 03 September 1989 cremations of [1] Harbhajan Singh, s/o Fouja Singh Jat, r/o Jandoke; [2] Jamel Singh, s/o Gurdeep Singh Jat, r/o Sirhali Khurd and [3] Raghubir Singh, s/o Mohinder Singh Jat, also r/o Sirhali Khurd. The cremations were carried out by ASI Sukhdev Singh of Tarn Taran’s Sadar police station under FIR No. 76/89. The postmortem reports are marked as AK 62/89, AK 63/89 and FM 135/89. The cause of death in all three cases is mentioned to be “police encounter”.

The Committee has spoken to the family members of Harbhajan Singh, Jaimal Singh, who was wrongly identified in the list as Jamel Singh, and Raghbir Singh and has the following information on these cremations through its Incident-Report Form Nos. CCDP/01451, 01452 and 01453. Jaimal’s father’s name, mentioned incorrectly in the list as Gurdeep Singh, is Gurnam Singh.

Raghbir Singh, originally from village Sur Singh Wala in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar, was a fifty year old farmer who had been living with his wife and children in Sarhalli Khurd, his maternal village, under Post Office Sakhira near Tarn Taran Sadar police station. Raghbir Singh did not have any political affiliations and had no criminal record.

Jaimal Singh, son of Gurnam Singh and Guro, was a twenty-five year old baptized Sikh farmer from village Sarhalli Khurd, post office Sakhira, under Sadar police station, in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. He was married to Lakhwinder Kaur and was the father of two sons and two daughters. He also had no political background and had never been arrested or interrogated before his execution.

In 1992, Jaimal had harvested a good monsoon crop of paddy and, on 2 September 1989, he left for Tarn Taran’s main grain market aiming to sell a trolley-full of his harvest. Jaimal was returning home around 7:30 p.m. after completing the sale, when Raghbir Singh, who had gone to the grain market for the same purpose, took a lift in his tractor. Both of them were shot dead without any warning by a group of armed CRPF personnel who had set up a check-post at the canal bridge near village Sahabpur on Tarn Taran – Patti road.

That same night, the CRPF also fatally shot Harbhajan Singh from Jandoke village, not far from the site of the previous incident, also taking him to be a suspicious person. Harbhajan Singh was a 50 year old farmer, married to Joginder Kaur, with six children. He had no political associations and was returning to his house, along with his servant, after watering his fields. Harbhajan Singh was seriously injured and bleeding. Harbhajan Singh’s family talked to several eminent persons of the village who got a bullock-cart to take him to a hospital for treatment. On the way, they were stopped by the CRPF again, but after listening to the villagers they let them go on. However, Harbhajan Singh succumbed to his injuries on his way to the hospital.

When Raghbir Singh and Jaimal Singh did not return home that night, their family members assumed that they had been unable to conclude their business and had, therefore, stayed back in the grain market at Tarn Taran. The next morning, some people in the village heard about the incident and went to the spot where the CRPF had shot and killed the farmers in a tractor trolley. The villagers recognized Raghbir Singh and Jaimal Singh and informed their family members.

The villagers were very agitated about these killings and met the senior police officials to seek an explanation and inquiry. The officers promised to inquire about the executions and, after conducting the postmortem, handed the dead bodies to the relatives to pacify their anger. All of the bodies were taken to their villages and cremated there by their relatives. The CBI’s list, however, shows that the three dead bodies were cremated by the police at Tarn Taran cremation ground. This suggests that the police officials gave the dead bodies to the villagers to diffuse their agitation about the senseless killings, but forged the cremation records to show that they had been killed in encounters and cremated as unidentified militants. ')"

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