THE LIST OF UNIDENTIFIED DEAD BODIES

12 - 17. Under Sl. Nos. 117/212, 118/213, 119/214, 120/215, 121/216 and 122/217, the list identifies six cremations carried out by the SHO of Jhabbal police station on 03 August 1990 under the FIR number 91/90. The postmortem reports are marked as SS-37/90, SS-38/90, SS-39/90, PK-1/90, PK-2/90 and PK-3/90. The cause of death in all cases is given to be "firearm injury".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00144 reveals the following information about these cremations.
Twenty-five year old Harjit Singh, son of Jagir Singh and Sawinder Kaur, was a young farmer resident of Lalu Ghuman village, under Jhabbal police station, in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. His father Jagir Singh, the head of a religious institution named after an old Sikh saint Baba Khushi Das at village Thatta, is the main informant in this case.
According to Jagir Singh, his son Harjit had been illegally arrested once in June 1990. The police brutally tortured him under illegal custody for ten days, but they released him without any charges.
On 01 August 1990, a large police force from Jhabbal and Tarn Taran police stations surrounded two neighboring villages Lalu Ghuman and Mannan on the basis of information that some militants were hiding between them. The siege of Lalu Ghuman lasted thirty-six hours. The same afternoon the police force killed four militants after storming a house where they were hiding.
Earlier that morning, Harjit had gone to visit his aunt at village Mannan, and was arrested there by SHO Gurdev Singh of Jhabbal police station. A large number of people witnessed his arrest. The police took Harjit to Jhabbal police station for interrogation under torture. Some hours later, the SHO got Harjit tied to a police jeep and had him dragged around on the road outside the police station to make an example of what the police would do to persons who sheltered or supported underground militants. The ghastly spectacle was witnessed by a large number of people in Jhabbal. Presumably, Harjit's torture yielded information enabling the police to arrest Kashmir Singh, son of Dara Singh of Lalu Ghumman village who was forced to identify the militant hideout leading to its storming and the killing of the four militants sheltered there. Kashmir Singh was also killed along with them.
Some hours later, Harjit Singh was brought to the site of the encounter and also shot dead.
On the 3rd and 4th August 1990, several newspapers, including daily Ajit and Jagbani, published a report about the encounter claiming that six militants had been killed. The report was based on a statement issued by the police officials.
The brutal torture and arbitrary killings of Harjit Singh and Kashmir Singh in the faked encounter caused a spontaneous upsurge of anger in the people of Lalu Ghumman and the neighboring villages. Thousands of people staged a demonstration before Jhabbal police station to demand the return of their dead bodies. The police dispersed the crowd with force and carried out the cremations without informing the families. The newspaper reports chose to ignore the event. Harjit Singh and Kashmir Singh were also cremated as unidentified militants killed in the encounter.

18. Under Sl. No. 552/893, the list shows a 27 October 1992 cremation carried out by SHO Siddhu of Jhabbal police station. The list does not mention the FIR No. The postmortem report is marked as KK-68/92 and the cause of death is given to be "firearm injuries".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00195 reveals the following information about the cremation.
Thirty-five year old Balwinder Singh alias Bindu, son of Amar Singh and Gurbachan Kaur, was a farmer resident of village Jhabbal Kalan, Patti Sabai Ki, under Jhabbal police station, in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. Married to Rajwant Kaur, the main informant in this case, he was the father of three minor children, two sons and a daughter. Balwinder's elder brother Zail Singh was an officer of the Indian army. Balwinder had no association with the militant movement and had never been arrested or interrogated.
On 4 October 1992, around 1:30 p.m., a large police force led by DSP Ashok Kumar and SHO Amarjit Singh of Jhabbal police station raided Balwinder's house when he was working in his fields. The police officials arrested his mother and his wife and took them to the police station where the police tortured them to force them to confess that a militant named Bagga had taken shelter in their house. The two women did not know anything about it. But their interrogation under torture continued.
Later in the evening, Balwinder was arrested from the house of his friend, known as Chala, son of Dara Singh in the same village, when he was consulting the village elders about how to get his mother and wife released from the illegal police custody. Chala and all his family members were also arrested and taken to the police station. All of them were released the following day. Balwinder's mother Gurbachan Kaur was released four days later. His wife Rajwant Kaur was let off a week later. But the police did not release Balwinder.
Balwinder's brother Zail Singh, an officer of the Indian army, found out about his illegal arrest and immediately returned to his village to try to get him released. He met DSP Ashok Kumar and SHO Amarjit Singh who allowed him to meet his younger brother in the police lock-up. Balwinder's physical condition from his torture was very critical. The DSP Ashok Kumar told Zail Singh that he would release Balwinder as soon as his condition improved if he did not initiate any legal action. Zail Singh hoped for the best and waited for his brother's condition to improve, meeting him every day in the police lock-up between October 14th and 20th. On the 21st, SHO Amarjit told him that Balwinder had been transferred to Ferozepur police for further investigations. Zail Singh immediately went to Ferozepur and found out that Balwinder had not been brought there.
Zail Singh and the family panicked and tried to identify persons who could influence DSP Ashok Kumar to disclose the truth about his brother. They managed to persuade Baba Sodhi from Kartarpur town in Jalandhar, a scion of the fifth Sikh Guru Arjun's clan, to meet with the DSP to find out what happened to Balwinder. The DSP told him that he should have intervened earlier and that Balwinder had already been killed. The meeting took place towards the end of October 1992.
Zail Singh then addressed petitions to the highest functionaries of the Indian State, including the President, the Prime Minister and Home Minister of India, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Chief Minister of Punjab and the Director General of Punjab police. The petitions narrated the sequence of events beginning from his brother's abduction to his disappearance and demanded an independent inquiry to determine what the police had done to him. The petitions remained unacknowledged.
Balwinder's widow Rajwant Kaur later filed a petition before the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, praying for the direction to the State authorities to either produce her husband before the court or to disclose what actually happened to him. The court admitted the petition, marked Criminal Writ Petition No. 1380/1995, and issued notice to the police officials asking them to file their affidavits in the matter. The court dismissed the petition, after the police officials denied having ever arrested Balwinder Singh, with the observation that she was free to approach a lower court with a criminal complaint. The Supreme Court also refused to admit her appeal.
According to Rajwant Kaur, some officers of the CBI visited her to make inquiries and also collected her husband's photographs after the Supreme Court instituted an inquiry into the allegations of police abductions leading to secret cremations. She believed that the CBI's investigation would establish the truth. According to her, a CBI officer Karam Singh Rana visited her the last time on 06 July 1997.
It is indeed ironic that Balwinder's cremation figures in the CBI's unidentified list.

19 - 22: Under Sl. Nos. 173/240, 174/241, 175/242 and 176/243, the list shows four 19 November 1991 cremations carried out by the ASI of Amritsar's Sadar police station under FIR No. 635/91. The postmortem reports are marked as ND/FM/85/91, ND/FM/86/91, AKC/FM/483/91 and AKC/FM/582/91. The cause of death in given as "police encounter".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00221 reveals the following information about one of these cremations.
Twenty-year old Harnam Singh alias Nama, son of Gura Singh and Harbhajan Kaur, was a resident of village Sanghna, Patti Hindu Ki, under Sadar police station, in Amritsar district. A baptized Sikh and a member of the Sikh Students Federation, Harnam was unmarried. His father Gura Singh, the main informant in this case, used to be an active member of the Akali Dal and had participated in the agitation launched by the party in 1982 to demand greater political autonomy for Punjab.
Harnam had been arrested illegally three or four times for interrogation about his suspected militant links. But the police released him every time without pressing any charges. Clearly, they had no evidence to link him with any terrorist offence.
According to his father Gura Singh, a group of police officers he could not identify arrested his son Harnam on 02 November 1991 and went away with him to an unknown destination. His efforts to trace him to a police station in Armitsar city failed.
On 19 November 1991, a Punjabi daily newspaper Ajit carried a prominent report about Harnam's killing in an encounter. The report, under the caption "Bhai Harnam Singh Sangha and 19 other militants killed", said Harnam Singh and three of his companions belonging to Bhindranwale Tiger Force had been killed in an encounter near village Fatehpur in Amritsar district. The DIG spoke to the media claiming that the police had recovered letter pads of different militant organizations from the bodies of the slain militants and that the militants had engaged in kidnapping businessmen from the city for extortion.
The police cremated the bodies without informing the families. The CBI placed all the cremations, including that of Harnam Singh, prominently identified by the newspaper reports, in its list of unidentified cremations.

23 - 24: Under Sl. No. 208/300 and 209/301, the list mentions two 03 June 1992 cremations carried out by Chhearta police station. The list does not show the FIR No. The postmortem reports are marked as ND-450/92 and ND-451/92. The cause of death is given as "police encounter".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00222 reveals the following information about one of these cremations.
Forty-year old Surjit Singh alias Laat, son of Mohinder Singh, was a farmer resident of village Sanghna, Patti Hindu Ki, under Sadar police station in Amritsar district. Married to Kashmir Kaur, with five minor children, Surjit had been a member of the Akali Dal. According to Kashmir Kaur, the main informant in this case, her husband had no association with any militant groups.
Early in the morning of 2 June 1992, around 5 a.m., a large police force, led by SHO Mahinder Singh Karikki of Chheharta Police Station, arrested Surjit from his house. The arrest was witnessed by the headman of the village council who the police officials had woken up to help them identify Surjit's residence and also to lead them to the houses of Lakha Singh, son of Bhan Singh, and Surinder Singh Shinda, son of Bahal Singh, residents of the same village. The police also arrested both Lakha Singh and Surinder Singh.
The police released Lakha Singh the next day. His physical condition from torture was very bad and he did not speak to anyone for several weeks. The police released Surinder Singh from illegal custody after a few days. He informed Kashmir Kaur that her husband had been killed in a faked encounter, along with another illegally detained person, one day after his arrest.
Kashmir Kaur went to meet SSP Dhillon and implored him to tell her the truth about her husband's disappearance. The SSP scolded her for failing to stop her husband from sheltering militants and, when she started crying, promised to get her children admitted in a school. Indirectly, he admitted that she had been wronged and promised to help her raise her children. The SSP was soon after transferred out of the district.

25. Under Sl. No. 114/143, the list shows a 28 December 1990 cremation carried out by Amritsar's Sadar police station. The list does not mention an FIR and states that the postmortem report is "not available". The cause of death is given as "gun shot".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00227 reveals the following information about this cremation.
Twenty-year old Avtar Singh alias Tar, son of Sewa Singh and Joginder Kaur, was a resident of Sanghna village, Hindu Ki Patti, under Sadar police station in Amritsar district. Avtar was unmarried. His father Sewa Singh, the main informant in this case, was an active member of the Akali Dal and had participated in the agitation for Punjab's autonomy launched by the party in 1982. The police treated his family suspiciously and especially harassed his young son Avtar.
To avoid harassment at the hands of the police, Avtar went away to the foothills of western Uttar Pradesh where a relative had a large agricultural farm. He came to his village regularly to visit his parents. According to Sewa Singh, the Punjab police found out about his residence in Pilibhit Khiri district of Uttar Pradesh and abducted him from there in the middle of December 1990.
Several newspapers in Punjab published a report about Avtar Singh's killing in an alleged police encounter prominently in the last week of December 1990. Sewa Singh, a mentally disturbed person, does not remember the exact date.

26 - 27. Under Sl. No. 537/304 and 538/305, the list shows two 17 November 1992 cremations carried out by SHO Satwant Singh of Khilchian police station under FIR No. 178/92. The postmortem reports are marked as GM/953/92 and GM/952/92 and the cause of death is mentioned as "police encounter".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00233 reveals the following information about these cremations.
Twenty-one year old Gurdev Singh alias Ladi, son of Gurmit Singh and Narinder Kaur, was a resident of village Kale Ke, under police station Khalchian in Amritsar district. After completing his matriculation, Gurdev opened a bicycle repair shop in his village. His father Gurmit Singh was an employee of Markfed, a federation of Marketing Cooperative Society to help farmers secure better agricultural prices for their produce. According to Narinder Kaur, the main informant in this case, Gurdev had no connection with the militant underground but the police had been arresting him illegally for interrogation. He was unmarried.
On 30 November 1991, Gurdev was abducted from his house by the Jandiala Guru police force and, after two weeks of torture under illegal custody, implicated in a case under the TADA. But the court released him on bail three months after his arrest because of insufficient evidence to justify the charges. Following his release, Gurdev closed down his bicycle repair shop and started working for the Punjab State Electricity Board at Butari.
In the evening of 11 November 1992, around 4 p.m., Gurdev was returning to his village home after completing his day's work at Butari when on the way, at Rayya bus stand he was abducted by a group of officers led by SHO Paramjit Singh of Beas police station. Several persons from Gurdev's village who were also traveling in the same bus witnessed his abduction.
The next day morning, Gurdev's father Gurmit Singh, accompanied by several members of the village council, went to Beas police station where the SHO admitted the custody of his son and promised to release him after completing his investigations in some days. Gurmit Singh, his family members and village elders continued to visit Beas police station for the next five days but could not talk to the SHO again.
On 18 November 1992, several Punjabi newspapers published a report about an encounter near village Bania in which the police had killed four alleged militants. The press reports identified all four by their names and the villages of their residence. Three of them were from village Kale Ke. They were [1] Gurdev Singh, son of Gurmit Singh, [2] Jaswant Singh, son of Dalip Singh, [3] Sahib Singh, son of Piara Singh and [4] Manjit Singh, son of Santokh Singh from village Sudhar Rajputan.
The police carried out the cremations without the family's knowledge. SHO Paramjit Singh told Gurdev's father not to talk about his son's abduction and not to publicize the religious ceremony if he held it to commemorate his death.
The CBI's list of identified cremations, under Sl. Nos. 539/150 and 540/151, names the cremations of Sahib Singh and Jaswant Singh. The circumstances of their abduction and killing have been discussed in the chapter dealing with the cases mentioned in the CBI's first list.
According to Narinder Kaur, Gurdev's mother, CBs officials called on her several times to record her statements about her son's abduction and arbitrary execution. Her husband Gurmit Singh also visited the CBI officers at their temporary office in Amritsar after the Supreme Court in November 1995 ordered an inquiry into the matter of secret cremations. Narinder Kaur remembers that one CBI Inspector P. C. Sharma had visited her to make the inquires.
Indeed, it is extraordinary that, after all these exertions, the CBI should place the cremations of Gurdev Singh and Manjit Singh in its list of unidentified cremations.

28. Under Sl. No. 187/254, the list shows a 20 December 1991 cremation carried out by Amritsar's Sadar police station. The list does not mention the FIR number. The postmortem report is said to be "not available". The cause of death is given to be "bullet injuries".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00260 reveals the following information about this cremation.
Palwinder Singh alias Sona, son of Ajit Singh and Satnam Kaur, was an Amritdhari Sikh boy resident of village Khalehra, post office Gehri Mandi, under Jandiala Guru police station in Amritsar district. After completing his matriculation, Palwinder had begun to help his father, the main informant in this case, with the agricultural work. He was unmarried.
Palwinder had been illegally arrested three times and brutally tortured under interrogation. To avoid torture under illegal custody, he had begun to live away from his house.
On 20 December 1991, Palwinder was taken into custody at a police check post that had been set up across Amritsar's railway station. Palwinder was riding the pillion of a motorcycle No. PB02-C-4455 that belonged to Kulwinder Singh, son of Ajaib Singh, the Secretary of village councils in Punjab, who lived in Amritsar. It is not clear whether the two of them were acquainted or if Pawinder had merely taken a lift. The motorcycle was stopped for a routine check at the police barrier and both of them were taken into custody by SHO Ajaib Singh of Sadar police station. The arrest was witnessed by Manjit Singh, head of the village council of Raja Sansi, an influential man with many contacts in the police.
Palwinder was killed the same night in a supposed armed combat between the police and a group of militants. The Punjabi Tribune, in its report about the encounter that appeared on 21 December 1991, said that Palwinder was a top militant who held the designation of Lieutenant General within his underground outfit.
The police carried out the cremation, but the family members were allowed to watch the burning pyre from some distance. Considering the publicity Palwinder's reported encounter received in the press, it is extraordinary that the CBI should place his cremation in its unidentified list.
Kulwinder also disappeared. His father Ajaib Singh, after failing in all attempts to get justice, committed suicide on 7 July 1997 in the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.

29. Under Sl. No. 410/633, the list shows a 23 March 1992 cremation carried out by the SHO of Verowal police station under the FIR number given as 23.3.92. The postmortem report is marked as KK-35/92 and the cause of death is mentioned to be "firearm injuries".
The Committee's Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/00261 reveals the following information about this cremation.
Twenty-one year old Gurmeet Singh, son of Lakhbir Singh and Manjit Kaur, was a Punjab police constable resident of village Jalalabad, under Verowal police station, in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar. Constable Gurmeet Singh, with his belt number 1997, was posted at police post No. 6 in Jalandhar. He was unmarried. According to Lakhbir Singh, the main informant in this case, his son had never been involved in political activities and diligently performed his duties as a policeman. There had never been any kind of complaint against him.
On 15 March 1992, Gurmeet was coming home to visit his sick mother. After getting down from a public transport bus, Gurmeet was walking towards his house when he was abducted by a joint group of Punjab police officers and a unit of the Indian army who were carrying out a search operation in the village. Several residents of the village witnessed the abduction, but his subsequent whereabouts could not be ascertained.
The family members found out that Gurmeet had been killed in an encounter faked by Verowal police in the night intervening the 22nd and 23rd of March 1992. When they reached Tarn Taran cremation ground on 23rd of March, the police officers had already left the scene after lighting the pyre. Lakhbir Singh and other members of his family were, however, able to recognize Gurmeet's clothes and his shoes lying close to the pyre.
The family members hold SHO Swaran Singh and his subordinate Teg Bahadur Singh of Verowal police station responsible for Gurmeet's abduction, arbitrary execution and secret cremation.