Under Sl. No. 64/158, the list identifies the 13 January 1990 cremation of Ruldu, s/o Bawa Singh, r/o Pringri, carried out by ASI Subha Singh of Harike police station under FIR No. 5/90. The postmortem report is marked as SHG-7/90 and the cause of death is given to be “bullet injuries”.

The Committee has the following information in the case through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01494. The main informant is the victim’s brother named Ghukk.

Ruldu was an 18 year old Muslim boy from Pringari village, Patti Vichla Vehra under Harike police station within Patti subdivision of Amritsar district. His father was known as Bawa alias Niwab, and was not a Sikh as the name Bawa Singh in the CBI’s List suggests. Though a Muslim, Bawa had opted to remain in India at the time of the 1947 partition of Punjab. Ruldu was unmarried and worked as a farm worker. He and his family members had no connections with the Sikh militant movement.

On 12 January 1990 afternoon, around 4 p.m., Ruldu went out of his house to fetch fodder for animals, and also to bring some alcohol from the neighboring village of Kirtowal. Ruldu was walking down towards Kirtowal when two police vehicles, which were probably chasing someone, came behind him, and some policemen open fire and shot him dead. On hearing the gunfire, several villagers came out and saw police officers loading Ruldu’s dead body into their police vehicle. The police vehicles drove in the direction of Patti.

The next morning, a large number of people from the village accompanied Ruldu’s elder brother Ghukk to Patti where the SHO of Harike police station gave him the dead body for cremation after obtaining his thumb impressions on several papers. Being very poor and illiterate, Ghukk could not take any action. The body was taken back to the village and buried according to the Muslim religious custom. On 14 January 1990, Ajit used a police handout to report that a militant injured during an encounter near Pringari village had died in the Patti hospital.

The CBI’s list shows Ruldu to have been cremated by the police whereas in reality he was buried by his brother at his own village. ')"

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