Under Sl. No. 137/521, the list identifies the 18 September 1991 cremation of Beera Singh, s/o Shankar Sansi, r/o Rasoolpura, carried out by SHO Ram Nath of Patti police station under FIR No. 134/91. The postmortem report is reported as “not available”. The cause of death is given as “police encounter”.

The Committee has the following information through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01533. The main informant is the victim’s widow Kalash Kaur.

Forty-year old Beera Singh, son of Shankar Singh and Harbans Kaur, was a Sansi Sikh resident of village Rasulpur, post office Bhangala, under Valtoha police station, in Patti subdivision of Amritsar district. He earned his livelihood as a construction laborer and was married to Kalash Kaur with four sons and a daughter. The eldest son Mewa Singh is now in his mid-twenties and the youngest daughter is a teenager.

The police had arrested and interrogated Beera Singh several times in the past because of their suspicion that he engaged in theft and other petty crime. In 1989, Beera Singh decided to become a baptized Sikh. He belonged to the Sansi community, one of the Sikh scheduled castes recognized by the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders [Amendment] Act, 1976. The police became suspicious of his initiation as an orthodox Sikh, and began to arrest and torture him again to find out if he had developed militant connections. Fed up by these frequent arrests and custodial persecution, Beera Singh left his house. The police then began to torment his family members, picking them up and torturing them frequently. In July 1991, SHO Surinder Singh of Valtoha police station arrested Beera Singh’s brother Shinder Singh and disappeared him.

Beera Singh was arrested on 17 September 1991 from village Toot by DSP Sukhdev Singh Brar and SHO Ram Nath of Patti police station. Although the village falls under the jurisdiction of Valtoha police, Beera Singh was taken to Patti police station and interrogated under torture. The same day, the police eliminated him in an “encounter”. When the family members reached the cremation ground, to attend to his last rites, the police beat them up and dispersed them. ')"

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