He collected his son’s ashes the next day with help from a cremation ground attendant

Under Sl. No. 143/568, the list identifies the 04 November 1991 cremation of Sahib Singh, s/o Mohinder Singh, r/o Dasuwal, carried out by SHO Surinder Singh of Valtoha police station under FIR No. 76/91. The postmortem report is marked as SLG 107/91. The cause of death is given as “police encounter”.

The Committee has the following information through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01523. The main informant is the victim’s father Mohinder Singh.

Twenty-two year old Sahib Singh, son of Mohinder Singh and Piar Kaur, was a Mazhabi Sikh resident of Dasuwal, post office Maneke Dasuwal, under Valtoha police station, in Patti subdivision of Amritsar district. The eldest of four brothers, Sahib Singh was illiterate. He was married to Ranjit Kaur with two daughters, and supported his family by working as a farm laborer. He had no political connections and had never been arrested. Sahib Singh’s father Mohinder Singh was a village watchman.

On the evening of 03 November 1991, around 8 p.m., Sahib Singh went out to the fields to defacate. That evening, the Valtoha police, led by SHO Surinder Singh, were conducting a house-to-house search of the village. A short while later, some people of the village came to inform the family members that the police had arrested and taken Sahib Singh away. The family members informed the village headman and other eminent persons of the village and went to Valtoha police station the next morning to find out why the police had arrested Sahib Singh. They could not meet the SHO, but some constables told them that he had gone with the dead body of a militant killed in an “encounter” last night for its postmortem. By the time Mohinder Singh and other members of his family reached Patti, the police had already conducted the cremation.

Mohinder Singh was unable to take any action. He collected his son’s ashes the next day with help from a cremation ground attendant.

Adam Levine Page