Under Sl. No. 65/159, the list identifies the 24 January 1990 cremation of Jarnail Singh, s/o Kartar Singh, r/o Joura, carried out by SI Baldev Krishan of Tarn Taran’s city police station under FIR No. 16/90. The postmortem report is marked as IS 14/90 and the cause of death is described as “police encounter”.

The Committee has the following information through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01511. The main informant is Charan Kaur, the victim’s mother.

Twenty-three year old Jarnail Singh alias Jaila, son of Kartar Singh and Charan Kaur, was a truck driver, resident of village and post office Jaura, Patti Fattu Kian Di, in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amitsar district. Jarnail was a baptized Sikh and very religious minded. After finishing school, he became a truck driver. He was unmarried and lived with his parents.

The incharge of Kairon police post suspected Jarnail Singh of maintaining links with militants and, from the middle of 1989 on, began to raid his house to arrest him. Jarnail Singh feared torture and went into hiding.

On 23 January 1990, Jarnail was staying with his sister Ninder Kaur and her husband Surjit Singh at their village Tharu. That morning, the police started a combing operation of Tharu and the neighboring villages and Jarnail Singh, finding out about the impending operation, tried to leave the village on his bicycle. He was arrested a short distance away from his sister’s house. Ninder Kaur’s family members witnessed the arrest but, fearing police wrath, did not intervene.

Shortly after arresting Jarnail, the police orchestrated the drama of an “encounter” and declared him killed. The police then came to Ninder Kaur’s house and took her and other family members to the site where Jarnail’s body was lying for its identification. Then the police took the body away to Tarn Taran’s City police station.

The next morning, Jarnail’s mother Charan Kaur, members of her village council and other elders of both Jaura and Tharu villages, reached Tarn Taran’s City police station whose SHO, after some discussion, agreed to return the dead body to the family. But he insisted that the family had to promise not to initiate any legal action and got them to sign several papers. After the postmortem, the SHO handed the dead body over to the family, which carried out the cremation at village Jaura.

Later, police officials visited Charan Kaur several times and forced her to put her thumb impression on several papers that she was not able to read.

Once again, we notice that although the dead body was returned to the family and the cremation itself was carried out at the victim’s own village, the CBI’s list shows it as a police cremation carried out at Patti.')"

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