Under Sl. No. 110/326, the list identifies the 27 January 1991 cremation of Hardev Singh alias Deva, s/o Dharm Singh, r/o Jhor Singh Wala, PS Patti, carried out by the SHO of Jhabbal police station under FIR No. 12/91. The postmortem report is marked as AK?27/1/91. The cause of death is given as “police encounter”.

The Committee has the following information through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01566. The main informant is Balbir Singh, the father-in-law of the victim’s sister.

Eighteen-year old Hardev Singh, son of Dharam Singh and Pooran Kaur, from village Jor Singh Wala in Patti subdivision of Amritsar district, had attended school up to the 9th standard. Leaving school in 1988, he started driving a taxi. In his spare time, he helped his father with the work on his agricultural land.

In the middle of 1990, the police started raiding his house with the intention of arresting Hardev Singh because they suspected his taxi was being used by militant groups. Hardev Singh did not present himself before the police as instructed by them, and instead, went underground. The police began to terrorize his family members. Over the next six months, his father, mother, sisters and their husbands were taken into custody, innumerable times, and brutally tortured. Their ordeals did not end even after the police killed Hardev Singh in a faked encounter.

Early in the morning of 26 January 1991, around 7 a.m., Hardev Singh left the house of the headman of village Lalu Ghumman on his scooter planning to attend a public function at village Shaheed, organized by the All Indian Sikh Students Federation. He had gone only 20 meters from the house, where he had slept the night before, when the scooter suddenly stopped. Apparently, the village headman had drained the fuel out of his scooter the night before, as a part of his understanding with the police to nab Hardev. Hardev was still checking his fuel tank when the policemen who had been hiding nearby, led by SHO Gurdev Singh of Jhabbal police station, took him into their custody. The news about his arrest spread and was announced by his associates at the public function organized in village Shaheed. Hardev was killed in an “encounter” organized by the Jhabbal police near village Kot Dharam Chand that same night. His family members reached Patti cremation ground the next morning, but did not dare to come out while the policemen were still around. They collected the ashes after the policemen left.

The cycle of police repression against his family members continued for nearly one and a half years after Hardev’s killing. They were often detained and tortured to reveal the weapons and money that Hardev had allegedly hidden with them. The police did not let them cultivate their agricultural land. In the end, the family decided to sell all of their property in the village and moved their residence to Amritsar city where they presently live.

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