Under Sl. No. 129/426, the list identifies the 30 May 1991 cremation of Shinda, s/o Kabul Singh, r/o Jodhpur, carried out by SI Ram Nath of Tarn Taran’s City police station under FIR No. 78/91. The postmortem report is marked as HKD?13/91 and the cause of death is given as “encounter”.

The Committee has the following information in this case through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01629. The main informant is the victim’s uncle Shamsher Singh.

The name of the person identified in the CBI’s list as Shinda was Gurinder Singh alias Ginda, son of Kabal Singh and Swaran Kaur. He was a resident of Jodhpur village, under Tarn Taran’s Sadar police station, in Amritsar district. After completing his matriculation, Gurinder joined a Finance Company as a clerk, but later quit the job to settle down as a farmer. He married Rajwinder Kaur, but they did not have children.

Gurinder’s father Kabal Singh had retired from the Indian army to join the Punjab and Sindh Bank as a gunman. From early 1987, the local police began to raid Kabal Singh’s house to apprehend his brother Avtar Singh who had apparently joined the militant underground. Kabal Singh and his sons had nothing to do with him, but the police detained them often for interrogation. Eventually in 1990, Avtar Singh was arrested and killed in an encounter staged in Patiala district. But the police suspicion against the family continued.

Sometime later, a group of militants robbed the bank at which Kabal Singh worked as a security officer. The authorities suspected Kabal Singh’s involvement and, eventually, following his brutal torture under interrogation, implicated him in a criminal case.

On 30 May 1991, around 11 a.m., a large group of police officers from Tarn Taran surrounded Kabal Singh’s house. Apparently, three militants led by Nishan Singh of Bhattal Bhai Ke village, had taken shelter in his house and the police had been tipped off by local informers. Kabal Singh himself was in jail, but his son Gurinder was home. On seeing the police force, Nishan Singh jumped the wall of the house into the agricultural fields behind it and started running away. The police force opened fire at Nishan Singh and chased him into the fields. The firing continued for a long time. Meanwhile, two other companions of Nishan Singh and Gurinder Singh were taken into custody and forced to move ahead of the police in the direction Nishan had run. The police operation continued till late in the evening and the family members could not find out exactly what happened thereafter.

The next day, several Punjabi newspapers published a report about the encounter in which Nishan Singh and Gurinder Singh had supposedly been killed. The cremations were carried out by the police.

According to Shamsher Singh, Gurinder’s uncle, the police also killed the other two boys who had been apprehended along with Gurinder. One of them was a resident of village Naraingarh under Jandiala Guru police station and the other was from Roore Asal village. However, their cremations are not included in the CBI’s lists and it is not clear what happened to their dead bodies. The CBI’s list of partially indentified cremations lists the cremation of Nishant Singh, r/o Bhathal Baike under Sl. No. 37/427. Nishan Singh’s name has been misspelled. He was cremated on 30 May 1991 by SI/SHO Ram Nath of Tarn Taran City’s police under the same FIR No. 78/91. The postmortem report number is HKD-14/91 and the cause of death is given as “police encounter”.

Shamsher Singh himself was arrested two days later and, following brutal torture under interrogation that lasted two months, implicated in several criminal cases. Shamsher Singh remained in jail for three and a half years and then was acquitted in all of the cases by the court. ')"

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