Under Sl. No. 145/576, the list identifies the 21 November 1991 cremation of Swaran Singh, s/o Gian Singh, r/o Ratool, carried out by SHO Gulzar Chand of Tarn Taran’s city police station. The postmortem report is marked as BSK 46/91. The cause of death is given as “police encounter”.

The Committee has the following information through its Incident-Report Form No. CCDP/01519. The main informant is the victim’s father Gian Singh.

Thirty-year old Swaran Singh, son of Gian Singh and Bhajan Kaur, was a carpenter resident of village Rataul, Jaichandian Di Patti under Tarn Taran’s City police station. The eldest of four brothers, he was married to Swaran Kaur and was the father of two sons and a daughter who are now all teenagers. He was a baptized Sikh and was not connected with any political, militant or religious organization. Police had never arrested or interrogated him. One of his maternal uncles, Surjit Singh, was a Deputy Superintendent of Delhi police.

One day in November 1991, Swaran Singh went to work but did not return home. The family members became very worried and did not know what to do. They looked for him at various police stations, and talked to several officers, but to no avail. Swaran Singh’s uncle from the Delhi police came down to make inquiries and met several senior police officials. He was also unable to trace Swaran Singh or find any information. Some weeks later, the family members heard rumors that Tarn Taran police had abducted and killed Swaran Singh. However, in the absence of an acknowledgement or even of an informal admission by the police, the family is not in a position to say anything about what happened to him. The family suspects that a newsreport published by daily Ajit on 23 November 1991 about the killing of an unidentified militant in an encounter with the police near Kotli village of Tarn Taran police district may actually be about Swaran Singh.

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