CHAPTER THREE
BLOOD STAINED PAST

Unhen sadiyon na bhoolega zamana,
Yahan jo hadse kal ho gaye hain.

(Let the world not forget for centuries, the holocaust that ripped this land)

The tragedy of Punjab is very difficult to express. Every objective writer finds his pen dipped with tears of hundred and thousands of grief stricken eyes of kin of those killed in the State by the police for over a decade in the name of "fighting terrorism". The task of lauding the role of Punjab Police in tackling the so-called "extra-ordinary situation" in the State was dutifully performed in many ways, courtesy, lavishing Press conferences and cocktail parties thrown open to the press by the Punjab Police led by "Supercop" KPS Gill, the then Police Chief of the State. However, the most important aspect of the Punjab problem relating to official lawlessness and root of militancy movement in the State was intentionally not touched till now, which we endeavor to undertake in this chapter.

It would remain a history that the armed movement in Punjab, is in many ways different from other armed movements in the country. It is different, because it was fought with religious zeal and zest. It started because the heart and soul of every Sikh was wounded by the attack on their highest temporal seat, the Akal Takht by the Indian Army and they had started believing that Indian Government is their enemy. It is also different, because the movement was driven out of hatred against the government which had done injustice to the Sikh community since independence. The Sikh militants were also different in many ways. Every true militant, popularly known as "Baba" (elder one) was a baptized Sikh with high character and exemplary courage. They became militants because they were pushed to the brink by the circumstances created by the Indian State. Because it was the behavior of the security forces towards them and their families that finally drew them into the struggle for freedom. It was forced upon them, which proved to be a life-taking pill, and culminated into a long battle for the right to self-determination. It was a matter of honor to resist. Because they had lost faith in the Rule of Law and took to gun in order to get justice for themselves and other people. Operation Blue Star and Wood Rose were attacks on the Sikh sense of honor. Particularly the attacks on amritdharis simply because they were Amritdhari, caused outrage. It was only they who were arrested, intimidated and killed. Likewise, entering the house, removing the women and taking daughters and sisters to police stations offended their sense of honor. The outrage to the Panth and the outrage to innumerable families merged. The dishonored families' experience motivated them to fight to remove the existing system.They were known warriors and social reformers. They forced the people to shun unrealistic rituals like spending money on the marriage ceremony, dowry system and discrimination among lower and upper class. People used to call them to settle their domestic disputes. The young and the old admired them. While Sikhs loved their presence, Hindus felt afraid of them. Even few Hindu youths joined the militancy because of excesses committed upon their near and dear ones by the police. Although these militants never attacked or killed innocent people, Hindu fanatic leaders and media dubbed them as terrorists indulging in indiscriminate killings. In the earlier days of militancy in the State, only those policemen or police informers were killed who were allegedly responsible for committing excesses on innocent people or passing over any information to the police about militants' movements. Acts like killing of S.S.P. Gobind Ram of Batala in a bomb blast in his own office and two unsuccessful attempts on the life of the then Police Chief J.F.Riberio in PAP, Jalandhar were enough to establish the command of militants in the State and to demoralize the force to a large extent. Both Gobind Ram and J.F.Riberio, like many other Police officers, were considered responsible for ordering the persecution of many innocent Sikhs. Such was the fear of militants in Police circles that many subordinate rank and even Senior Police officials liked to maintain cordial relations with top ranking militants. Many policemen used to tell them that such and such informer passed over information about their activities. Even after receiving written warnings when the informers did not mend their activities, they were killed and their families were warned of similar punishment if they continued doing so. There was no restriction on the movement of militants in the State during the peak of militancy.

J.F.Ribeiro, the then DGP of Punjab Police, became frustrated on seeing this situation and was unable to bear the parallel government being run by the militants. He decided to apply the same strategy in tackling the situation in Punjab as he had successfully carried out in Goa from where he was brought to Punjab. After getting a nod from the Central government of Congress, he was very clear in his policies and programs. He recognised neither the Indian Constitution nor the State machinery. During the period 1985-88, he declared that in Punjab "police accountability is to itself." He prepared and got published a hit list of 38 "top terrorists" of A category and 400 of B category to be eliminated by the police and promised financial rewards, out of turn promotions and other benefits. He also introduced many other entirely illegal and indefensible terror tactics. He openly inducted in the police force criminals who were reportedly involved in incidents of theft, extortion and dacoity. This practice had many motives. Firstly, many third rate and petty criminals infiltrated into the militant ranks and every act of killing, extortion, theft was blamed on the militants, this badly affected the image of the militants and people started thinking ill of them. Secondly, it was to create in the rural areas a class of individuals and families that should, apart from becoming unsympathetic to the cause of the militants, become hostile to them, thereby creating at the village level factional divisions. The third objective was to create at the village level informers who, out of a feeling of revenge, should supply information to the Administration, partly also serving their factional interests thereby. The militants trapped into this sinister strategy, were forced to wipe out the criminal elements from inside their cadre which led to inter-gang bloodshed in the State.

This gave a golden opportunity to the Police to settle their own score and kill any body they liked and the blame would come on the militants. Organizations like "Black Cats" were floated and undercover agents were made to operate in the garb of militants and sometimes police. The Police used to pick up few militants and declare them dead to "mislead their gang members" but actually they were used as "Cats", a euphemism for a militant turned undercover police agent. In 1986 when reports of creation of "Black Cats" first came into media, since some police backed vigilantes were identified as being involved in a dacoity and murder in the Chowk Mehta area of Amritsar District, the then SSP, Mohd.Izhar Alam strongly denied the existence of any such force. Vipul Mudgal, of the India Today, gave a lead story on these under cover "Cats", wherein he mentioned that the government was "recruiting policemen with criminal tendencies for a special task force to be constituted along the lines of the Dirty-Dozen.... And now inquiries are pending against at least a dozen police-backed vigilantes, bounty hunters, undercover operatives over serious charges of corruption." The Hindustan Times also reported that under cover agents continued to operate in the State and were using weapons provided by the police to kidnap local people and extort money from them. According to intelligence reports, these "Cats" consisted of a band of dismissed policemen and terrorists-turned approvers. Their squads were let loose, no questions were asked, they were fully armed with arms and ammunition to match those of the terrorists. They started their own loot and plunder in the name of militants. The more they killed, the more they were hailed, never mind whom they were killing. Most of the incidents of indiscriminate killings of bus passengers, members of minority community, small children and even women were the handiwork of these elements. This policy was extensively re-used by the Punjab Police during their post-1991 anti-terrorism drive. In fact, Senior Police authorities now admit that the "Cats" also formed the pivot of the then Punjab DGP KPS Gill's post-1991 anti-terrorism strategy. He used to catch few petty criminals who had infiltrated into militants' ranks and after offering them immunity, high rewards or jobs in the force, made them work for him(Police). He started the practice of assuring the captured criminals or militants that they wouldn't be killed in a fake encounter but let off or just sent to jail if they opt to be a "cat". If they agreed, they were shown to be fugitive or to have been killed in an encounter, in the police records. They were then given false identity and such people served the police in many ways. This was a pressure tactic to make even an unwilling and hardcore militant work as a "Cat". Secondly, declaring a hardcore militant "dead" leads to demoralization among the militants. It also helps maintain the anonymity of a militant turned "Cat" and his efficacy in neutralizing others. In fact, this strategy of Punjab Police was neither legitimate nor permissible under police rules. If the view of KPS Gill is correct that there is no illegality in using a criminal to catch another one, it is also true that making a killer out of a criminal in the garb of "Cat" is illegal. The Police Cats were nothing but police vigilantes hired for bounty killings. There are still many "Cats" who have got many criminal cases pending against them, and they are working in Police department. According to intelligence reports, more than three hundred "Cats" were on the rolls of KPS Gill, who were given monthly allowance, police guards and even police vehicles and at the end of 1993 out of these only forty "Cats" were found alive. The incidents of "Cat" creating a reign of terror, came to light in 1987 when one of the dismissed policemen Dalbir Singh who had been given double promotion and a free hand as he pleased. After his dismissal from police, he had been reemployed. He was known to have committed numerous crimes, including bank robberies, dacoities, murders etc. He became a favourite of Ribeiro, when he helped the police in nabbing some militants. He gained police loyalty when he gunned down "A" grade militant Surinder Singh alias K.C. Sharma in Chandigarh. He was given two out of turn promotions, a jeep and two guards armed with stenguns. Posted in Patiala, with no official daily routine, his secret jurisdiction extended to the whole of Punjab and even nearby states. Once he was found raiding banks and looting money. He was summoned by the area S.P. and was asked to either share his exploits with the police or stop his activities. He reportedly picked up a revolver lying on the table and shot the S.P. Baldev Singh Brar. The SSP, Sital Das came running from the next door office to pacify the vigilante. But Dalbir Singh shot him too and then shot himself. Another notorious member of the "Cat" brigade was Santokh Singh Kala who mainly operated in Jalandhar area. Constable Basant Singh, of Village Amargarh in Sangrur district was also a known "Cat" and had committed many crimes including abductions, killings and collected more than Rs 5 crore for his superior officials. He was the gunman of SHO Darshan Singh of Sidhwan Bet police station. He had even paid Rs.15 lakh to the then SSP Jagraon, who ordered SHO Darshan Singh to kill Basant Singh in order to get Rs. 5crore from him. On his orders, SHO Darshan Singh and SPO Sarabjit Singh killed Basant Singh and threw his body in a canal near Dardeke village. It was later learnt that Basant Singh used to commit crimes in the name of militants. The murder of Akali activist Balraj Singh Gill by one time militant turned police "Cat" Balwinder Singh Bhapp in Ludhiana in March, 1997 has once again called into question the very system of the "cats" being used by Punjab police in its fight against crime. It was later revealed that both Balraj Singh Gill and Balwinder Singh Bhapp were earlier police "cats" and had some duel over some trivial issue and in the ensuing altercation, Gill was shot dead by Bhapp who later surrendered before the Magistrate and confessed to the crime. According to Police record, Harpreet Singh alias Happy, was declared "dead" in an "encounter" by the Amritsar Police in 1992. He was allegedly wanted for 150 killings and carried a reward of Rs.10 lakh on his head. But actually he is still alive and produced himself in the Punjab & Haryana High Court, Chandigarh in December 1995 alleging that he was kept in police custody in 1992 and after his escape in September, 1992 he had been living as an anonymous person all these years. According to him, no such encounter took place. The Police claimed that it was a case of mistaken identity. Interestingly, more than ten such militants have appeared before the Courts who have been declared "dead" in police records. The policy behind these cases was that most of the militants declared "dead" were made to work as "Cats" who used to create terror and commit every kind of crime in the name of militants. A young Babbar Khalsa and Khalistan Commando Force militant, Fateh Singh was a proclaimed offender in police records. He was made to act as a "cat" in 1991 and for five-six years he aided the police in nabbing and killing many high rank militants, of course for heavy rewards. But today, he regrets for what he did, because now leading a normal life is even more dangerous than remaining a proclaimed offender in police records. The story of Amar Pal Singh of Ropar is no different. An absconder in police records, he was actually captured in 1991 on charges of terrorism and made to act secretly as "cat". But Ropar Police, not knowing of the switchover, continuously harassed his family. Unidentified gunmen later killed him. Kulbir Singh (name changed to conceal his identity)was also a known "Black Cat". His wife , a lady police officer in Punjab told that they lived in a civilian locality under undisclosed names. Kulbir had a van, and in addition to his official Mauser pistol, he was given four AK-47 guns that were captured from the militants. He along with his gang of "Black Cats" travelled dressed in civilian clothes and often had flowing beard to make them appear like Sikh militants. They kept their police identification with them, just in case the regular police accidentally picked them up. Receiving any information on militants, they would get verbal orders from the SSP to abduct those persons if possible and bring them to the police station for interrogation and torture. If they were unable to abduct someone, then they had orders to shoot and kill.Kulbir, according to his wife, had assisted the police in the abduction of Satwinder Singh (Toto), Harpal Singh Babbar and Kanwaljit Singh. He had also helped to kill Bhinda Kamoke, Lakha from Malaikpur, Kashmir Singh(Maulvi) and Balwinder Singh. According to the intelligence agencies, "Cats" were used for varying tasks. One way was to use them as spotters. Another was to make them infiltrate the terrorist gangs and provide information about their strength, hideouts and modus operandi. Yet another and deadly category was of "cats" who were armed and operated independently in the guise of terrorists, tracking down wanted terrorists and knocking them off. Many persons like, Kabal Singh 'Fauji' were kept in the CIA staff premises and deputed for killing the militants and then they returned to the CIA staff,Ropar. Kabal Singh Fauji was declared a hardcore terrorist in the press. In January, 1993, he was sent along with a revolver by the SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu of Ropar to Delhi where he was shown arrested from Delhi Police in an encounter and the press reported about the arrest of a hardcore terrorist of Punjab who had come to disrupt the Republic Day function in the capital. Later on, as planned, the Punjab police got his judicial custody from the Delhi court for interrogation in other cases of terrorism in Punjab and brought him to Punjab and showed 'escaped from police custody' whereas actually he was again living in CIA Staff, Ropar.

Such kind of hardcore criminals after showing exemplary courage and killing many top rank militants were inducted into police force. Sukhvir Singh, a wanted terrorist of Khalistan Commando Force till 1991 and Gurmeet Singh alias Pinky, a known criminal turned "cat" are now in the Punjab police. Many incidents were reported in the villages that during the night few "militants" used to take shelter and get food from one or the other house and leave in the wee hours. During the day, heavy contingent of police used to surround the entire village and arrest each and every person present in the house for allegedly harboring militants. Many persons identified these so-called militants in the police team who had visited them at night as militants. Gurmeet Singh alias Pinky who got out of turn promotion as inspector had become so out law that he shot a young boy, Avtar Singh of Ludhiana for objecting to his drinking session on a public road, on 7th January, 2001. Avtar Singh alias gola was passing by the house of Pinky when he requested the drunkard policemen and his companions to give way and that angered the policemen and Pinky shot the boy on his head at point blank range from his pistol and remained fugitive for more than a fortnight before being apprehended and booked for murder.

Ribeiro had also issued clear orders that any Sikh who raised his voice against Police brutality or professed extremism should be eliminated. He directed his men to pick up the relatives and friends of the militants to force the militants to surrender, and if they did not, to kill their relatives. He propounded the theory of "bullet for bullet" and virtually ruled the state with direct instructions from the Centre. The sordid picture, which brought to fore the horrible crimes committed by men in uniform and the tale of hundreds and thousands of victims is sure to make a powerful impact on the mind of mankind. The Punjab Police under the butcher brigade of officers like J.F.Ribeiro and K.P.S.Gill, the then Director-General of Punjab Police was frittering away their gains in a continuing onrush of official lawlessness. In its pursuit to achieve success at any cost and in the battle against their own countrymen, the Police in the State left behind scars that no penultimate tactical success will be able to heal. If the bombs and bullets of militants have wounded the People of Punjab, so too have they been injured by the methodical brutality of their protectors-the Police that often choose to enforce the law by breaking it. In an increasing number of instances, the Punjab Police was found subverting the process of law by stalling inquiries and shoving those indicting them under the carpet. Hundreds of innocent people were killed as "suspected terrorist" in fake encounters.

It is said that when the distinction between the law-breaker and the law-enforcer blurs, the state looses its authority. Exactly it so happened in the State during the black era in its history beginning 1987. In this turmoil the truth was the main victim. Many cases of militants being killed in police encounter, reported by the press were plain misinformation. Seething resentment was born each time the police jackbooted innocent but went unheard due to pressure of Police over print media. The Punjab Police had been acting beyond the pale of law time and again, and often in a most blatantly callous fashion. The statistics in Punjab are numbing and yet, the story they tell is impossible to ignore. During the last decade, more than 25,000 people had been killed by Punjab police branding them as "terrorists"-many more than killed in the 1965 Indo Pak War. Entire families were wiped out or the men were killed and the women were spared, or the parents were killed and the children were left, or the children were killed and the parents were left. After a point, death lost its sanctity. It became a matter of morbid humor. The period witnessed a particularly galling display of wanton, often barbaric police violence. The humanity was deeply disturbed by the diabolical recurrence of police excesses resulting in a terrible scare in the minds of common citizens that they were under a new peril when the guardians of the law drove human rights to death. The vulnerability of human rights assumed a traumatic, torturesome poignancy when the violent violation was being perpetrated by the very arm of the state whose function is to protect the people and not to commit gruesome offences against them as was happening in Punjab. The police-lock up, if reports appearing everyday in the newspapers, had any streak of credence, had become more and more awesome cells. This distressing situation proved to be disastrous to the human rights movement and humanist constitutional order. These were not lone aberrations, murders, rapes, torture, and excesses committed by the Police did not occur in the hinterland where policemen treated themselves to be the Judge, Jury and the Executioner. Illegal detentions and non-judicial killings became the order of the day. Relatives of the militants who had even disowned their kin were picked up and tortured. Even women and children were not spared. Anybody who went to secure their release was asked to produce the militant and when they could not do so, the badly tortured dead body of such victim was handed over to them. Sheltered by law that made them virtually unaccountable, the police was gradually becoming part of an evolving system in which the law grovels before authority instead of the other way around. Authority, clad in uniform, baton in hand, revolver at the hip, lost legitimacy-the moral mooring of the State-when it rose above the constitution. Because the police continued with its arbitrary ways, driven variously by greed, revenge, corruption, performance yardsticks and the need to cover up, it became the most dreaded force and proved to be its own enemy. In July, 1990 police claimed that there were only 1026 terrorists in the State. And by that time, newspapers had already reported that more than 2500 militants had been killed in police encounters. It means that there were still 1300 militants at large. In their lust for money and promotions, the policemen started killing even innocent people, or anybody whom they suspected to be known to some militant, in fake encounter, and operating a bloated and unaccounted "secret service fund" running into crores of rupees in an arbitrary and dangerous fashion. The rush for claiming cash rewards had turned them into uniformed mercenaries. Besides the rewards for killing listed militants, the department gave "gallantary awards" for killing unlisted militants. Every week, the Inspector-Generals of various ranges used to send their lists to Additional Director-General. The amount of reward varied from Rs.40,000 to 5 lakh. There was money even in seizing arms. A circular issued by the Police headquarters in 1992 reads : "Rs.7,500 for every General purpose machine-gun captured, Rs.5,000 for an AK-74 or an AK-47 and Rs.3,000 for a Sten gun."

During thosedays, the police had very few theories on their tips regarding police encounters. Most favorites among those were,

....... on receiving a tip off, a police party was holding a Naka on a road, when the vehicle was signaled to stop at the Naka, the occupants of the car opened fire on the police party and in the cross-fire two occupants of the vehicle were killed and three others managed to escape under the cover of darkness leaving behind heavy cache of arms and ammunition including two AK-47 and pistols etc.

....... So and so terrorist was being taken in police vehicle for the recovery of weapons when the police vehicle was ambushed by militants and in the cross-fire the arrested militant managed to escape or got killed and others managed to escape.Huge quantity of weapons were shown recovered from the encounter site.The story of an un-identified terrorist committing suicide by consuming cyanide before being caught was also not uncommon during those days. But the police stories came out to be bare faced lie when one asked a question that why it was always the militants who were killed in the ambush and no policeman ever suffered any scratch in that encounter. This was one among the many reasons of prolonged militancy in the state. It was very easy to kill anybody those days. Pick up a person, put a label of terrorist on him and then extract as much money from his relatives as one could and even after receiving the price, kill him in an 'encounter' and get another reward from the police force. Or at the least show him 'escaped from police custody'. Over the years the government evolved new modes of custodial killings. There were numerous reports giving instances of the kind, where encounter and cross-shooting had allegedly taken place but the only person dead or injured was the so-called terrorist, who was found with duly implanted ammunition and weapons. Sometimes the injured or the escaped person was the one who had been held handcuffed by the police. Reports of killing of 'unidentified' terrorists also became an order of the day. New theories of defining custodial deaths were evolved. These included 'suicide death by consuming cyanide', 'killed by other militants', 'unidentified militant found dead' or 'escaped from police custody'. The brunt of the police atrocities was borne by mostly the Sikh population that had no ray of hope of seeing the end of their sufferings. The reports published in magazines, newspapers about police repression contained innumerable cases of torture of innocent persons. Such incredible stories and explanations were advanced which were too ridiculous or irrational to believe.

On June 8, 1992 the Punjab police reported that 9 militants belonging to Bhindranwale Tiger Force had been killed during a 28 hour long encounter in Village Behla of district Taran Taran. According to eyewitnesses, few villagers namely Niranjan Singh, Sakattar Singh, Sukhchain Singh and a mason were constructing a room at their tubewell just outside the village. Suddenly a heavy contingent of Punjab police and CRPF surrounded the whole village and ordered these five men to come along with them to the house of Manjinder Singh, a local Akali leader. On the way Bhupinder Singh and one more person of the village were forced to join the party. At the house, the security forces put the men in front of them and told them to open every room and ascertain that no militant was hiding inside. After searching almost all rooms they directed the men to stand by the stairs along with a few police and CRPF men. Other security personnel went upstairs. All of a sudden there was a burst of gunfire in which five or six persons including one constable were killed. Actually the house was occupied by one Surjit Singh Behla, the so-called deputy chief of Bhindranwale Tiger Force of Khalistasn. Earlier to the encounter, his four sisters had also been brought to persuade Surjit Singh to surrender but he refused. The police, according to the villagers, kept the house under fire for 28 hours. After the encounter, the SSP of Taran Taran, Ajit Singh Sandhu, claimed that Surjit Singh Behla, deputy Chief of the BTFK, Madan Singh Maddi, Niranjan Singh, advisor to the militant outfit, Sakattar Singh an area commander of the outfit and five other unidentified militants had been gunned down while no civilian had been killed or injured. Newspersons who visited the spot immediately after the incident, found the police story quite baseless. Actually, it was found that innocent persons were used as human shields and 7 of them had been killed. According to the reports, the official version of the encounter was false. It was established that only two, perhaps four, among the killed were hardcore militants. Inspite of huge uniformed force laying siege to the house, the police reportedly resorted to the utterly revolting and indefensible ploy of using innocent civilians as shields from behind which they fought the besieged militants. Versions may vary and the security forces might deny using these men as shields, but the sinister manner in which innocent civilians were entered in the police records as unidentified terrorists killed in encounter has given their game away. This is the sort of blatant misinformation, which makes nonsense of police claims on the number of militants killed in Punjab everyday. The posthumous conferment of militanthood on persons rendered lifeless by police bullets had become a routine practice and a cruel joke. The people of Punjab were the optionless victims of this inhuman exchange of fire and falsehood. It has been an enduring boast of Mr. KPS Gill that his forces while not succeeding in bringing down the number of innocents killed by the militants, had succeeded in killing a large number of militants. If the Behla encounter is any indication, the people know what to make of this claim.

During 1988, KPS Gill, the Director General of Police, Punjab released a list of 53 'terrorists' which read: "Reward for apprehension/liquidation of wanted terrorists/extremists as mentioned against the name are hereby sanctioned....". The word "liquidation" was later on deleted, after a Public Interest Litigation was filed in the Supreme Court questioning the policy of the Punjab police in encouraging extra-judicial killings.

On December 8,1990 there was a robbery in the Putlighar branch of the New Bank of India in Amritsar. A few days later, the police claimed to have arrested the five accused involved in the crime. Later on, the police declared all the five accused dead in an encounter. Actually, the real story that came out later is different. All the five suspects were taken to isolated fields and shot in cold blood. An inquiry into the false encounter conducted on the orders of Senior authorities by DSP Dharam Singh, also established evidence of killings. He recommended the registration of murder case against the police party headed by ASI Ashok Kumar. But on the orders of Sanjeev Gupta, the then SSP of Amritsar, the inquiry was hushed up, inspite of the fact that the inquiry officer had recommended the registration of murder case against the police officials. Even the relevant file went missing from the police records. However, when a senior officer came to know about it, he ordered the file to be reconstructed and ordered appropriate action against the police officials. "It was a shameful case for the force" admitted the said officer.

Three militants - Sahib Singh, Dalbir Singh and Balwinder Singh-were "killed in police encounter" on September 13,1992 when they were allegedly ambushed by militants while being taken by the police for recovery of weapons near Thardhe village in Majitha Police district. Later, the body of another militant was found at the encounter site along with an AK-47 and some ammunition. But, the police officials at Amritsar admitted that there had been no ambush and all the four were already in police custody. Probably, they were also summarily executed.

In another telling case, on June 1,1992, Paramjit Singh along with his father, two brothers, sister-in-law and 18 month old nephew, were picked up from their home in Mohali, near Chandigarh on the charge of harbouring a militant, Amrik Singh kauli who was arrested from their house. Over one month, the police produced Paramjit Singh before at least six judicial magistrates in Ropar and Chandigarh to get a long term police remand, but the request was turned down. On July 4,1992 his mother, Pritam Kaur filed a petition in the High Court pleading the safety and security of Paramjit's life and that she would accept him being in jail even "in fetters and chains". On asked by the court, the police said that when Paramjit Singh was being taken for the recovery of some seditious material on June 27,1992 the vehicle had a punctured tyre on the Bhakhra main canal bridge near Rangilpur. Finding the police party busy changing the wheel, the accused, who was chained to the belt of a constable, jerked himself free and jumped with handcuffs into the canal and could not be traced thereafter. Police sources in Chandigarh however, confirmed that Paramjit Singh was still in police custody. The fact that no action was taken against the constable concerned, also belies the official story. Paramjit Singh is still missing and his parents are still hoping for his return some day.

On February 6,1991 Dalbir Singh Banka was arrested by the Ropar police from his village, Bahlolpur for illegal possession of arms. Two days later, he was brought back to the police station after "recovery of weapons". However, the following day his family members were told by the police that he had escaped during the previous night. After Banka's relative moved the high court, the Ropar Sessions Judge was deputed to look into the incident. A year later, the judge in his report dismissed the police version as false and held them responsible for Banka's disappearance; he was probably killed or held in the illegal police custody.

Sarwan Singh, son of Gurcharan Singh, a political activist of Village Ladhupur, in Gurdaspur District was booked in a murder case by the Gurdaspur Police, because he had unsuccessfully contested the assembly elections from Kahnuwan Constituency in 1992 against the Congress candidate and was inimical to congress people. He was made to surrender before the police after his old father and brother were illegally detained and tortured for two months in 1993. The then IG Border Range, D.R. Bhatti had assured his family members and village panchayat that he would not be killed in fake encounter. But only two days after his surrender, on 3.2.1993, the police in a press statement declared that he had escaped from police custody when the police party was ambushed by militants, while he was being taken for the recovery of weapons. His wife moved the Supreme Court and Sessions Judge, Gurdaspur was directed to conduct an inquiry into the disappearance and the Sessions Judge, discounted the police version and held that the police story that the victim had escaped from its custody was not at all plausible and that the victim was in the illegal custody of CIA Staff, Gurdaspur. But the police officials manipulated the case and no order was passed against any police officer for the crime.

Another case related to the cold blooded murder of four villagers who were travelling in a white Maruti Car on July 12,1992 near Ambala (Haryana) highlighted the inhuman behavior of the Punjab police. The occupants of the car were signalled to stop near Ambala by some jeep-borne policemen in plainclothes. The victims had mistaken the policemen in mufti for terrorists and sped away, but were chased by the police party and all the four including a small child were killed in the police firing. The police claimed that they were given wrong information that the men travelling in the car were dreaded terrorists, including Nirvair Singh Nindi, a top terrorist carrying a reward of Rs. 10 lakh on his head. But when the real identity of the victims were disclosed by the villagers who had protested at the police action by blocking traffic on the Delhi-Chandigarh highway, that those killed were an Ambala businessman Jaswinder Singh 28, his 4 yrs. young son and brother-in-law Jasbir Singh, the police realised its mistake. But still no action was taken against the police party for shooting down four innocent persons. However, on the orders of the High Court, a murder case was registered against the policemen including the then Senior Superintendent of Police, Mr.Sumedh Saini and all the police officers are facing a murder trial in a court at Ambala.

Shamefully, inspite of great public outcry and protests by the people, the government was not prepared to institute fair and independent inquiries into alleged police excesses, after few of them indicted some police officers, as in these two cases; The first involved a truck driver, Sukhwinder Singh of Chohan Village in Hoshiarpur Distt. The police version is that on November 8,1990 a police party led by ASI Manjit Singh signalled a truck to stop at a naka in Kapurthala district. Instead of stopping, the truck tried to run over the party, and its occupants started firing. In the chase both vehicles lost balance and plunged into the fields. Two terrorists escaped after killing the truck's driver, Sukhwinder Singh. Contradicting the police story, the villagers claimed that Sukhwinder Singh was on his way to Delhi after visiting his family and was shot dead by the police after he was accused by another villager of ramming his truck into his shop. On a complaint, the then governor asked the then Jalandhar Commissioner, N.K.Arora, to look into the matter. Arora found some incriminating evidence against the ASI and recommended an inquiry by a gazetted officer besides a compensation of Rs.50,000/- to the driver's wife. But the DSP who conducted the inquiry, exonerated the ASI. It was only in June,1992 that the Home department, on the orders of the Chief Minister, directed the State Police Chief KPS Gill to file a case of murder against the ASI. But the police refused to comply with its orders.

In the second case, on April 28,1992, Karnail Singh, a driver in the Customs and Central Excise department at Amritsar, was detained by the police following some altercation with somebody. Accompanied by some local customs employees, his wife went to the Sadar Police Station where they met him in the lock-up. But the next day the police told that he was not in their custody. Later, the police corrected themselves by saying that Karnail Singh was let off on May 29. And after S.P. Srivastava, regional customs collector, approached the Chief Minister, Beant Singh, the official version came: "Inquiries have revealed that Karnail Singh was killed by terrorists on May 1." It is another point that the inquiry conducted by Intelligence wing of Punjab police into the disappearance of Karnail Singh, had revealed just the contrary. SP Gian Singh, a Chandigarh based officer deputed to conduct the inquiry held that he was picked up in an inebriated state by a DSP and later interrogated by the Sub-Inspector Rajinderpal Singh of Police Station Sadar, Amritsar and his staff. "Due to toture or mishandling, he died on the night of the arrest. His body was taken away and thrown into a nearby drain" was the ultimate finding given by the Senior Police officials. But still no action was taken in the matter.

There were many such cases where the victims died in police custody and their dead bodies were thrown into the canal water without keeping any record of such elimination and without doing any inquest proceedings, which are mandatory under the criminal law. It was only after the recovery of hundreds of dead bodies from the waters of Bhakhra main line and Sirhind canal, that the Rajasthan Government made a formal protest to the Punjab government regarding recovery of a large number of dead bodies of Sikh youths, with their hands tied at their back.
Similarly in another case, Balbir Singh of village Shahpur in Patiala district was dragged into a police vehicle by CIA Staff, Nabha on July 27,1996. On reaching the CIA staff, the family members and village panchyat saw Balbir Singh being tortured by policemen. On July 28,1996 at about 4.30 p.m. residents of Thuhi village saw a police van standing on the Sirhind Canal bridge and the body of Balbir Singh was thrown into the canal. The whole village started looking for the body and it was fished out the next morning. Balbir Singh's post mortem report showed multiple injuries, burn marks and a fracture on the neck. In the High Court, the police took the plea that Balbir Singh had escaped from the police vehicle and jumped into the canal and died. Refusing to admit police story, the High Court ordered CBI inquiry into the incident.

Those days, when a person went missing, it was believed that he had been picked up by the police. But the police outrightly denied having heard of such person. Sometimes they were technically right because the person was picked up by police party from outside district. No information was given to any of the relative till one read in the newspaper about the death of the detenu in some police encounter.

Ram Singh Biling, a Sangrur based journalist and human rights activist was picked up by the police from Bhogiwal village in Sangrur on January,3, 1992 in the presence of villagers. But the police denied having taken him into custody. However, a senior police officer posted in Chandigarh admitted that he died at the police's hands, apparently from torture. His whereabouts are not known since then. The matter went to Supreme Court and also to National Human Rights Commission, who ordered the State of Punjab to pay Rs. 5 lakh as compensation for killing Biling in Police custody. But the guilty policemen were not harmed and are serving in the police department without any punishment.

A political leader and Member Parliament, Jagdev Singh Khudian was kidnapped from his village on December 28,1989. Later on his dead body was recovered from the Rajasthan Feeder canal on January 3, 1990. The police alleged that he committed suicide. His family members doubted this explanation and on their representation, the Punjab Governor appointed Justice Harbans Singh to inquire into the circumstances under which Mr.Khudian died. Justice Harbans Singh in his report submitted in April 1990 rejected the police account saying, "The presence of ante-mortem injuries, sufficient to cause death in the ordinary course of nature, established that he died of violence." The Judge further held that," inspite of family's suspicion of some foul play, the investigating officer adopted a line inappropriate to the situation. Even if the investigating officer or somebody higher to him was of the view that Khudian had committed suicide, the other possibility that he might have been murdered should not have been ignored. When the attitude of the investigating agency in the matter of death of an elected MP was so indifferent, what could an ordinary resident of Punjab expect of them? "

Another glaring example of police brutality was the elimination of the entire family of Sadhu Singh of Bagga Village in Majitha police district. On October 29,1991 a police party led by DSP Baldev Singh Sekhon who was posted at Dera Baba Nanak Police Station and his brother Head Constable Balwinder Singh picked up Sadhu Singh, his son and five grandsons in order to settle personal enmity and kept them in his custody. They were implicated in the kidnapping of a relation of the DSP. Since then there whereabouts were not known. DSP claimed that he had released them. But the fact is, that since no case was registered against them, he took them along when he was posted out of Majitha and killed all of them in extra-judicial manner. Later on the Supreme Court ordered a C.B.I. inquiry which found the DSP and eight others responsible for the liquidation of these people and on the orders of the Supreme Court, the DSP and eight others were booked for murder and finally sentenced to life by the Sessions Judge, Amritsar in March, 1997.

On November 21, 1986 C.R.P.F. jawans shot dead Sukhwinder Singh of Village Khyali in Amritsar district, simply because the taxi he was travelling in did not immediately respond when asked to stop. According to the driver of the taxi, Sukhwinder Singh and his 18-year old friend Ajeet Singh were gunned down as they alighted from the taxi a hundred yards from a C.R.P.F. picket. The police tried to pass it off as an encounter, until angry villagers organized demonstrations and road blockades. The matter was later, hushed up by the senior police officials.
On August 23, 1987, Sardool Singh, a 35 years old contractor of Amritsar was going on his scooter when he hit an old woman, but failed to stop. Unfortunately for him, Superintendent of Police Baldev Singh's car happened to be passing by. The officer's escort jeep overtook and overpowered Sardool Singh. According to eye-witnesses, C.R.P.F. jawans beat up Sardool Singh and in the melee a jawan accidentally pressed the trigger of his sten gun killing another policeman. This enraged the policeman who vented his frustration by spraying Sardool Singh with a burst of gun-fire. Later on, the police claimed that Sardool Singh was a wanted terrorist who was carrying a country-made pistol and that he had killed the C.R.P.F. jawan. But the inquiry report of S.D.M, Mr.S.P. Mahajan refuted the police story and held the deceased contractor innocent. He recommended compensation to the next of the kin of the deceased. S.P.Mahajan was, however, transferred from Amritsar soon after his report.
In its policy of making the State into a Police Raj, Punjab police crossed all limits of lawlessness and its officers treated themselves to be above law. The DGP Punjab, Mr.K.P.S. Gill himself became so mad that he lost control over his lust for women and even slapped a woman IAS officer, Rupan Deol Bajaj, on her posterior in a dinner party on July 18,1988. He was found to be under the influence of liquor. Later on he was booked for eve-teasing and ultimately convicted for the offence and fined.

In Amritsar, a police party arrested four women on the charge of pick-pocketing in 1992 and tattooed their forehead by inscribing "jebkatari" (pick-pocketer) on it. This inhuman crime was viewed seriously by the High Court and the Punjab police was again brought to dock for its inhuman acts of torture. The police officials were sentenced to imprisonment and each of the victim was awarded compensation and free medical treatment for surgery on the forehead.

On August 16,1991 Santokh Singh (40) of Ladhowal in Ludhiana district was picked up by a police party and brutally tortured, on account of which he died. The police concocted the story that he had died due to snake bite. The High Court awarded a compensation of Rs.2.5 lakh to the widow of the deceased, besides ordering criminal proceedings against the guilty police officials.

In March, 1993 Bagicha Singh, son of Hazoora Singh, a young granthi in a gurdwara in Village Sahungra in Hoshiarpur district was picked up by a police party led by Inspector Lakha Singh, SI Harpal Singh, HC Harbhajan Singh and Surinder Singh etc. and eliminated in extra-judicial manner. His father approached the High Court, and a judicial inquiry was held by Sessions Judge, Hoshiarpur who held that the "police story of escape of Bagicha Singh from police custody while being taken to Bariana Choe for the recovery of sten-gun is inherently infirm and too unnatural and improbable to be believed as correct and it seems to have been put forward with a view to justify the non-production of Bagicha Singh before the Court of Ms.Manju Bala, Judicial Magistrate, Hoshiarpur, on 8.3.1993, on the expiry of police remand and in all probability, Bagicha Singh was eliminated by the police party." After holding the trial of the nine policemen involved in the crime, the Sessions Judge, Hoshiarpur finally convicted and sentenced them to seven years imprisonment for killing Bagicha Singh.

Maninder Singh alias Dalli was arrested by Haryana Police on March 2, 1993 and handed over to Punjab police on 5th March, 1993. But after obtaining his police remand for more than a month in different cases, he was ultimately declared "escaped from police custody" on April, 24,1993. The Police story was that "when the accused was being taken for recovery of arms and ammunition, the police party was fired at by some unknown persons and in the ensuing exchange of fire, which continued for about half an hour, Maninder Singh had escaped from police custody under the cover of darkness." The High Court marked a judicial inquiry into the incident and the Sessions Judge, Patiala held eleven policemen responsible for liquidating Maninder Singh in the area of Village Majhi in Bhawanigarh in district Sangrur on April 24, 1993. The policemen are still facing murder trial in a Patiala Court.

Avtar Singh Shatrana, an elder brother of a militant was picked up by the police from Shatrana village in Sangrur district in 1991 in order to secure the surrender of his militant brother. His badly tortured dead body was handed over to his family few days later. The police story was that he was killed when a police party escorting him to recover weapons was fired upon by militants. But his body had no bullet injuries. Instead, it bore the marks of third degree torture.

Three brothers, Nishan Singh, Sukhdev Singh and Jagjit Singh of village Briyar in Gurdaspur district were picked up from their house on December 7,1992 and since then nobody heard of them. Their mother approached the Supreme Court where one person gave a statement that he had seen the three brothers in the custody of Kapurthala police. Supreme Court ordered CBI inquiry and the CBI found one Sub-Inspector guilty of liquidation of the three brothers and one Superintendent of Police guilty of destroying vital record of the case to save the policemen. The said policemen are still facing trial in CBI court in Patiala.

In 1993, the Car of the then Senior Superintendent of Police, Chandigarh Sumedh Saini was blown off in a bomb blast, but he escaped with minor injuries. A Sikh Police Constable Manjit Singh was suspected of aiding the militants. He was picked up on 16th August, 1993 and kept in police station Sector 26, Chandigarh. No body was allowed to meet him. On 17th August, he was handed over to his parents in a very serious condition. Inspite of every possible medical treatment, he succumbed to his injuries inflicted during third degree torture by the Chandigarh Police within few hours. Immediately after his death, his widow Karamjit Kaur filed a petition in the court asking for a fair postmortem examination and for restraining the police from cremating the body. The post mortem report established that there were many external injuries and muscle injuries on the deceased due to which he died. An inquiry was held into the alleged custodial death.

Another glaring case of police brutality in the state came to light when a young boy Surjit Singh alias Sarabjit Singh of Valtoha in Distt.Amritsar was abducted by a police party on October 30,1993 and after badly torturing him, he was brought to the Civil hospital, Patti as dead. When his post-mortem was being conducted, the doctors found him alive. He was immediately administered glucose and he gained consciousness. When the Sub- inspector Sita Ram, who had abducted and beaten him came to know of his being alive, rushed back to the hospital and forcibly took him away and brought his dead body for the post-mortem after sometime. Two advocates who were incidentally present in the hospital were witness to all this inhuman act. Next day, newspapers reported this incident in bold print and Supreme Court for the first time took suo moto notice of the news item " Killed once, twice..." and ordered a CBI inquiry into the incident. CBI chargesheeted Sub-Inspector Sita Ram and the Sessions Judge, Amritsar finally convicted and sentenced him to life imprisonment for abducting and killing Surjit Singh in police custody.
A teacher, Swaran Singh of Village Mohpur in Ludhiana district was similarly picked up from his house by Payal police in Ludhiana district on 5.7.1993 and subjected him to inhuman torture, because he was contesting the assembly elections in Payal constituency on Akali Dal(Mann) ticket against the Chief Minister Beant Singh. He was done to death and his whereabouts are not known since then.

In 1990, Nirmal Singh, Sarpanch of Gram Panchayat Hothian in Goindwal Sahib Police Station was kidnapped by Punjab police and since then his whereabouts are not known. His wife approached Supreme Court and a CBI inquiry was ordered into his disappearance. CBI found evidence of kidnapping and liquidation against 13 police officials and filed chargesheet in the court.

It must be borne in mind that the above mentioned cases are among those cases which were highlighted in the media and the victims' families were able to get some justice from the courts of the land. Otherwise, there are thousands of similar cases which failed to evoke any response from any quarter. In many cases, the people opted to compromise with the time and decided to bury their tragic stories in their heart and turned cold on being asked about any such incident. There are very few people today, who dare to come forward and challenge the police version of police encounter. Recently a Co-ordination committee on disappearances in Punjab held field survey of such victims and documented more than nine hundred cases of forced disappearances, fake encounters and summary executions. Still many others have not come forward or even did not remember the details like, when their relative was picked up or killed and who is responsible for his death. A chart containing the details of the 'missing' persons as reported by the Committee in its interim report released in 1999 is given in Appendix I.

Kulwinder Singh, son of Ajaib Singh was rounded up by a Police party of Amritsar on December 20,1991. Later on nobody heard of him. His father ran from pillar to post to get some information about his son, but ultimately when he could not get justice from any corner, he committed suicide on July 7,1997 by consuming insecticide in the Parikarma of Golden Temple, Amritsar under frustration. Kulwinder Singh, according to the police was arrested on a police naka while he was going on a scooter with Parminder Singh Sona, a hard-core militant. But police is silent about his whereabouts.

Surjit Singh of Dulokalan village in district Ludhiana was kidnapped by Sub-Inspector Gurmail Singh and SI Darshan Singh on March 17,1993 when he was returning to his village on his tractor. He was later shown to have been killed in encounter. Both the officers demanded Rs.1.60 lakh from his brother as a price for his release, which was not paid. Senior authorities on being approached by his brother conducted inquiry and held the two policemen responsible for killing Surjit Singh and a case was registered against them.

Gurbaj Singh alias Baja, a Patiala district resident was picked up by the Patiala police on March 5, 1993 and is missing since then. His mother then filed a Petition in the High Court and a judicial inquiry held by Sessions Judge, Patiala confirmed that Gurbaj Singh was killed in a fake encounter, the Police claimed that he had escaped from police custody while being taken for the recovery of weapons. The High Court while ordering a compensation of Rs. 1.5 lakh to the mother of the victim, observed that "It appears as if the police in this part of the country is playing the game of poaching holocaust i.e. eliminating human species. It is not a question of suppression of terrorism. The fact in this case clearly establish the attitude of the police, that wanted to take personal revenge against those people who had not compromised with them."

In 1992 one young Sikh Paramjit Singh of Bathinda, was picked up by a police party by branding him as terrorist and made him disappear for ever. The SHO Inspector Gurjeet Singh of Mansa gave the same pet story that Paramjit Singh had escaped after firing on the police party while being taken for the recovery of weapons near Chumbhewali village. His father was given a compensation of Rs. 1.5 lakh by the High Court, but on the orders of the Supreme Court, murder case against Inspector Gurjeet Singh and 10 other policemen was registered and they are facing trial in a CBI court.

Bhai Gurdev Singh Kaonke, the former Jathedar of Akal Takht was an Amritdhari (Baptised) Sikh. He was a religious minded person. Since 1984, he started taking active part in religious and political affairs of Sikhs. On 20 Jan 1986, he was appointed acting Jathedar of Akal Takht. He was arrested on 30 April 1986 from Golden Temple, Amritsar. When he used to go on tour for delivering religious discourses, often, the police used to surround that particular Gurdwara and used to ask him not to go on his preaching rounds. On 20 December, 1992, at 4 A.M., a police party consisting of 10-15 policemen came to his residence and told that they intend to arrest Gurdev Singh and take him along with them. The police took him along and released him in the afternoon. On 25th December (1992) at 5.30 A.M., the Police party in a Gypsy and led by Inspector Gurmeet Singh came home and asked for Gurdev Singh. Family members told them that he had gone to the local Gurdwara. The police went to the Gurdwara and asked him to accompany them to the police station. Bhai Gurdev Singh told them that he would go home and then accompany them. He then came home, followed by the whole village. He took his bath and then the police party took him along to Sadar Police Station Jagraon. His younger son Hari Singh, and Mohinder Singh went to the Police Station with food but were turned away by the police. Since then his whereabouts are not known. According to press reports appearing in January, 1993 it was alleged that Bhai Kaonke had escaped from police custody on January 3, 1993 when he was being taken by the police to a suspected hideout of terrorists for the recovery of arms and ammunition. An ex-serviceman Darshan Singh had disclosed in 1998 that he had seen his dead body in the Jagraon Police Station. Very recently, one convict Amarjit Singh, a resident of Ludhiana has made hair raising revelations about the cold-blooded killing of Bhai Gurdev Singh Kaonke. He says that on 30th December, 1992, he was detained in Police Station, Sadar, Jagraon in a case pertaining to narcotics smuggling. In the evening he saw four police gypsies entering the police station around 6.30 p.m. from which senior police officers came out. They went to another vehicle following them from which they dragged out a critically injured man whose face was badly bleeding and clothes were soaked with blood. He was thrown out of the Gypsy and the entire force surrounded him while the police officers started interrogating him. They continued with the torture but when they went inside to discuss something, he offered a few drops of water to the injured man, who was Bhai Gurdev Singh Kaonke. During this period, the victim told him that the police had threatened to eliminate him. And before he could reveal anything more, the police officers came out and all of a sudden fired shots at point blank range at him, killing him. Two other people' along with Amarjit Singh also witnessed this gruesome murder and the police all of them of implication in a false murder case if they revealed anything about the incident to anybody. Amarjit further disclosed that after half an hour, a police vehicle reached there and he was asked to load the Jathedar's body into the van, which he did. People's belief that he was tortured and killed in fake encounter has been certified by the eye-witness account. After great public outcry, high level inquiry by Mr.BP.Tewari, ADGP was ordered by the Punjab Chief Minister to pacify the angry villagers and the inquiry also found that the Jathedar was killed in cold blood by the police. But the inquiry report is gathering dust in the police records, never to be brought in public.
Gurmail Singh of Village Akkanwali in Mansa district was abducted in January, 1993 by Inspector Gurjeet Singh, Chuhar Singh and some other policemen of P.S. Mansa and killed in fake encounter. The Police showed him "escaped from police custody". On an inquiry being ordered by High Court, the Sessions Judge Bathinda held the policemen responsible for the disappearance of Gurmail Singh and on his report, the High Court ordered the registration of murder case against the two policemen.

Kulwinder Singh alias Kid, a young boy of Mohali, near Chandigarh was kidnapped from his house in Mohali on July 22,1989 by a police party headed by the then Inspector S.S.Grewal, SI Birbal Dass, ASI's Amarjeet Singh and Chanan Singh, HC's Gurcharan Singh and Nikka Ram, besides constable Dayal Singh and later on during the night intervening July 23 and 24,1989 killed him along with another person, in a false police encounter in a field near village Tangori, Distt.Ropar. His father approached the High Court seeking judicial inquiry into the elimination of his son in fake encounter. A Judicial inquiry was marked and the Sessions Judge Chandigarh was deputed to hold the inquiry. He found the police version of police encounter palpable lie and held that "Kid" was killed in cold blood by the police. On his recommendation, the High Court ordered C.B.I. to file chargesheet against all the above named police officials and after obtaining sanction for their prosecution, the CBI has now presented challan against them in the court at Chandigarh.

Dalbir Singh, son of Shiv Ram was picked up by Ropar police from his house on March 11,1992 and since then his whereabouts are not known. The police declared him dead in a fierce police encounter on March 13, 1992. On the orders of the High Court, Sessions Judge, Ropar held an inquiry into the disappearance of the boy and held the police guilty of killing him in fake police encounter. In a very similar way, Harjit Singh of Taran Taran was picked up by a police party of Taran Taran in October, 1992 and later on shown to have been killed in an encounter. His father also knocked at the door of the High Court and a warrant officer was appointed to find out the boy in police custody. The warrant officer found Harjit Singh in the lock up, but the police whisked away the detenu to an unknown place. Later on Sessions Judge Amritsar was asked to conduct the inquiry into the disappearance of the boy. He did not give any clear finding and asked for a detailed probe into the matter. Thereafter the matter was sent to CBI for investigation.

Kuldip Singh, son of Sukha Singh a young boy of Kalanaur in District Gurdaspur was picked up by the Gurdaspur police on May 21, 1988 from his residence and since then his whereabouts are not known.

Sixty-five years old Baldev Singh from Amritsar had retired from 9 Punjab Regiment of the Indian army. His youngest son Pragat Singh (25), earned his livelihood from a dairy farm. The police began to harass him, picking him up for interrogation and torturing him in illegal custody. Unable to put up with the harassment, Pragat Singh went away from the house but was arrested on 19 September 1990. On 5 November 1992, newspapers reported Pragat Singh's death in an armed encounter with the police near Raja Sansi, a suburb of Amritsar. Baldev Singh talked to an employee at the General Hospital in Amritsar where the post-mortem of the dead body had been conducted. The employee's description of the body matched Pragat Singh's. Baldev Singh reached the Durgiyana Mandir cremation ground in the nick of time even as the police had just lit the pyre. The head was already burning, but the rest of the body was still intact. His son Pragat Singh was burning. Although Baldev Singh was allowed to carry the ashes for the last rites, the abduction and the illegal cremation remained officially unacknowledged.

Lakhwinder Kaur from Tarn Taran in Amritsar district was the mother of 35 years old Hardev Singh, a farmer and a member of the All India Sikh Students Federation. Hardev Singh disappeared after the police kidnapped him from the house of a colleague on 28th September 1992.
Baljit Kaur, also from Tarn Taran in Amritsar district, was married to a head constable of the Punjab police. Her brother Balwinder Singh, the elected head of the village council of Chabal Khurd, had been vocal against the police abuses and therefore had become an eyesore for the authorities. On 8th March 1993, Balwinder Singh was picked up from his house by Balbir Singh, officer in-charge of Chabal police station. The next day, a group of police officials brought Balwinder Singh to his village and thrashed him there publicly until he fell unconscious. Later, he was taken back to the CIA interrogation center in Tarn Taran. Baljit Kaur's husband learnt through his police contacts that his brother-in-law was later killed there and his body secretly disposed of.

Fifty-five years old Dilip Singh, hailing from Amritsar city owned a dairy farm and was an active member of the right wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party. His twenty-six years old son Jaswinder Singh was a college student and also worked in a pharmaceutical shop. Earlier, he had been arrested under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. Released on bail for lack of evidence, Jaswinder's trial was still pending. On 19 August 1992, Jaswinder Singh attended the special court at Faridkot and pleaded for an expeditious disposal of the case so that he could concentrate on his studies. The court fixed the case for final disposal the next day. The same evening, Jaswinder was abducted by armed commandos of the Punjab police when he was boarding a return bus to Amritsar. Approached by Dilip Singh for help, then Minister for Public Works in the Punjab government, Joginder Singh Mann talked to SSP Jasminder Singh of Faridkot on telephone and confirmed that Jaswinder was indeed in his custody. Joginder Singh Mann gave Dilip Singh a letter introducing him to the SSP. The letter mentioned their telephonic talks about Jaswinder and requested him to meet Dilip Singh and to release his son. Dilip Singh met the SSP, who promised to let the boy go in some days. Later, he denied the custody. In early 1993, Vidya Sagar Sharma, SP of Faridkot, told Dilip Singh that Jaswinder Singh was alive and was being held in a CRPF camp. There has been no further information about Jaswinder's whereabouts.

A retired Naib Subedar Charan Singh of Village Goslan in District Ludhiana was taken away by the Jagraon Police on May 17,1994 for leading the police party to one of his neighbour Amarjit Singh. After that there was no information about him. Later on the police reported in the press that both Charan Singh and Amarjit Singh of village Goslan were killed in an encounter on May 20, 1994. On November 21, 1991 Gurmukh Singh of village Manupur in District Ludhiana was taken away by SHO Joginder Singh of P.S.Khanna from his house. He was also not found later. His family members read about his death in a police encounter in a newspaper on 2nd December, 1991. Harvinder Singh, a member of Sikh Students Federation was picked up by a police party led by DSP Madanjit Singh from Patiala Bus Stand on March 29, 1993 and thereafter his whereabouts are not known. Another member of Sikh Students Federation, Darshan Singh of village Goslan in Ludhiana district was arrested by SHO Jaswinder Singh Mangat of P.S. Morinda from Gurdwara Gur Sagar, near Chandigarh on October 24, 1993. He was also seen by his family members in Police Station Morinda on November 17,1993, but the police flatly denied having taken him into custody. Later on he was shown to have been killed in an encounter. Amrik Singh of village Amargarh in Sangrur district was abducted by Punjab police from a bus when he was returning to his village in the evening of October 1, 1992 and since then there is no information about him. Randhir Singh alias Dheera of village Gunnopur in district Gurdaspur was arrested from a Gurdwara in Chandigarh by a Punjab police party of P.S.Kahnuwan on 18th February, 1993 and was shown to have been killed in a police encounter on 13th March, 1993 along with another militant. He was declared as the area commander of Khalistan Liberation Force.

Jagjit Singh, son of Harjit Singh of Karimpura Bazar, Ludhiana was picked up along with his friend Pritam Sharma from Shimla Bus Stand on September 4, 1992 and was taken to Faridkot where they were seen alive till November 1992. But after that there was no information about them.

Sohan Singh Buttar of Dan Singh Wala village in Bhatinda district was picked up from his house on 29th January 1993 by a group of officers led by Assistant Sub Inspector (ASI) Surjit Singh of Jaito police station in Faridkot district. Many villagers and the family members witnessed the abduction. No one saw Sohan after that. His father Phoola Singh believes that he was killed in a fake encounter staged on 29th February 1993, along with Ranjit Singh Behla. He believes this on the basis of information that a constable at Jaito gave him informally.

Amarjit Singh, an electrician with the Punjab State Electricity Board, was a resident of Jalal Usman village in Baba Bakala subdivision of Amritsar district. He was arrested from his office in Majitha on 14th September 1991, by SHO Pritpal Singh of Fatehgarh Churian police station. His colleague Santokh Singh first informed the family about the abduction. The next day, one Shori Lal, son of Munshi Ram from Pabanrali village visited the family to tell them that he had seen Amarjit in the lock up of Fatehgarh Churian the previous night. Amarjit's father Arjan Singh went there and met his son. When he went to the police station again on 16 September 91, he was told that Amarjit had been transferred to the custody of DSP Dera Baba Nanak, Baldev Singh Sekhon. When Arjan Singh went to DSP Baldev Singh Sekhon, he denied the custody. Although no one from the family has seen Amarjit again, they hope of seeing him alive.

Manmohan Singh (32) was an Ayurvedic doctor who lived at Thermal Colony, Bhatinda. He had his clinic in the town. As a baptized Sikh, he used to take active part in the religious activities, but had no political connections. However, his fervent religiosity brought him under suspicion . On 10th May 1992, around 1:30 p.m, a team of police officers led by SHO Kahan Singh of Paras Ram Nagar police post raided the clinic and took Manhoman into custody. Inspector Sukhdev Singh Chahal and several other police officials were along with the SHO who told Ranjit Singh that his son would be released after interrogation. On his scooter, Ranjit Singh father of Manmohan Singh followed the police vehicle until it reached the Kotwali police station. Later that evening, he led a delegation to Inspector Sukhdev Singh Chahal who said that Manmohan Singh had been detained on the SSP's orders. The delegation met the SSP to ask if Manmohan was in his custody and what he proposed to do with him. The SSP answered them evasively. A habeas corpus petition before the High Court, filed by the relatives yielded no result. On a later date, SSP Anil Kumar Sharma told Ranjit Singh that he should carry out the last rites of his son. This indicated that Manmohan had been killed and his body disposed of in a clandestine manner.

Jatinder Pal Singh alias bunti (17) and Manjit Singh (22) , both residents of Mohali were members of All India Sikh Students Federation, a hardliner Sikh youth organisation of Punjab. On 16th January, 1988, both of them were picked up from the house of Manjit Singh at about 7 a.m. by a dozen policemen in plainclothes in un-numbered vehicles. After tying their hands at their back with their turbans, they were bundled into the vehicles and taken to unknown place. Since then their whereabouts are not known. Next day, three more friends of the duo were picked up from Mohali, in similar manner. Amongst them was one brother of a boy who was the member of All India Sikh Students Federation. The policemen had warned the relatives that if they wanted the release of those boys, they should produce the member of A.I.S.S.F. before the Station House Officer of CIA Staff, Patiala. The relatives of Jatinder Pal Singh, Manjit Singh and other boys immediately sent telegrams to Chief Minister,Punjab, DGP, Chief Justice of Punjab & Haryana High Court and Union Home Minister. The relatives of these boys also met the SHO and pleaded for the release of the boys, the SHO Surjit Singh Grewal acknowledged their arrest and assured that they will be released within few days. But he released only three boys and refused to tell anything about Jatinder Pal Singh and Manjit Singh. The released boys informed that both of them were lastly seen in the Interrogation Center, Mai Ki Serai, Patiala where they were badly tortured. After the Chief Secretary of Punjab referred them to the Director-General of Police, Punjab Mr.J.F.Riberio and the latter refusing to tell anything about the two, a Habeas Corpus Petition was filed in the Punjab & Haryana High Court seeking the release of the detainees in 1988. But the Petition was summarily dismissed after the Senior Superintendent of Police filed the affidavit that the boys were neither wanted nor in the custody of the Punjab Police. Interestingly, the Punjab Police had already declared Jatinder Pal Singh as a Proclaimed offender way back in 1987 in a case of alleged attempt to murder registered at P.S.Mohali and was in his search. Isn't it a mischievous game plan of the Senior Police authorities of the Punjab police in filing false affidavit in the High Court regarding non-requirement of the boy when he had already been declared P.O. and wanted in a criminal case ? This case was taken up by many National and International Human Rights bodies such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Punjab Human Rights Organisation. But inspite of great efforts and pressure built by Amnesty International upon the Indian Government, the whereabouts of Jatinder Pal Singh and Manjit Singh are not known till today. Though the boys could not be saved, yet the Punjab police was put in a fix with almost all the national and international newspapers prominently carrying the story of illegal detention and elimination of the two youth by the Punjab police. The role of High Court in treating the Habeas Corpus petitions very casually and dismissing the same without getting the detainees released or even without holding a preliminary inquiry into the disappearance, also came under attack. But the situation was so alarming that every organ of the law proved non-existent and failed to perform its duty to establish the rule of law.

Balwinder Singh, 22, a taxi driver living in Chandigarh was picked up by a police party in plainclothes on 17th January,1988 and taken to undisclosed place. Since then his whereabouts are not known. He was also lastly seen by some other detainees in Interrogation Center, Mai Ki Serai, Patiala, but the Senior Superintendent of Police, Patiala denied having taken him into custody.

Dr.Joginder Singh (28), a prominent medical practitioner of Ludhiana with no political or criminal background was an eyesore in the eyes of Punjab Police because one of his friend was a listed militant and had escaped from the police dragnet. He was picked up by a police party from near his clinic on 2nd May, 1992 and taken to Interrogation Center, Faridkot. There he was subjected to inhuman third degree torture for many days and was lastly seen in the Interrogation Center for more than six months. He was being asked to prescribe medicines to the other detainees who suffered injuries due to excessive torture. After that his whereabouts were not known and he was declared missing by the Police.
There are hundreds of similarly abducted boys in Punjab who have been done to death either by torturing them or shown killed in fake Police encounter. But no court, civil administration or other authority dared to call it a cold blooded massacre of Sikhs.

Twenty-four years old Ranjit Singh alias Kala, a clean shaven Sikh from village Bhambri under Khamano police station of Fatehgarh Sahib district was a daily wage labourer who supported his parents and three young brothers from his meager wages. Unconnected with any political or militant activity, he had no previous police record. Early in the morning of 10 July 1991, armed policemen led by ASI Balvir Singh, the Station House Officer of Bhadson police station, raided his house. The family was still sleeping. The policemen manhandled everyone, particularly Ranjit and his younger brother Pritpal before taking both of them away to Bhadson police station. At the police station, the brothers were segregated. Pritpal Singh was questioned under torture, but was allowed to return home the next morning. Ranjit did not return home, nor was he seen or heard of again. On 13 July 91, the newspapers carried a news which said that Ranjit was killed in cross firing between unidentified militants and team of police officers who were taking him to recover arms. His father Swaran Singh along with village elders went to the Bhadson police station to ask for the dead body. But the abusive officials shooed them away and the family could not find out where, when, how and by whom Ranjit was cremated.

Fifty-five years old Santokh singh was a small farmer from Village Behla under Tarn Taran city police station in Amritsar district. His youngest son Sukhdev Singh Ladi had joined the ranks of militants and had been killed in a supposed armed encounter with the police, reported to have taken place some time in 1992 near their own village. The police harassment of the family became very intense after this incident. In February 1993, SHO Narinder Singh Malhi of Police station Doburji in Amritsar picked up Santokh and his son Kuldip, who was employed by the Punjab Electricity Board. Few days after the abduction, the head of the village council of Sanghna was able to persuade the SHO Malhi to release Kuldip. But the SHO demanded a bribe of Rs. 50,000 for Santokh's release. The family was not able to raise this money, and Santokh was taken away to the CIA interrogation Center at Tarn Taran. Santokh was seen alive for the last time at the CIA interrogation Center in Tarn Tarn in March 1993 when Amrik Singh, son of Gurmej Singh from Behla village went there, along with Malook Singh, a member of the village council, to persuade SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu to release him. The SSP said that Santokh's interrogation was still continuing. They went back to the SSP few weeks later, when the SSP said that he had already released Santokh. His whereabouts are not known since then.

Forty years old Nirmal Singh, a small farmer from Hothian village under Goindwal police station in Khadoor Sahib subdivision of Amritsar district, was elected head of his village council. On 25 October 1992 afternoon, ASI Balbir Singh from the police post of Fatehabad raided Nirmal Singh's village house and took him into illegal custody. The same day, all the other members of the village council along with the family members met the DSP of Goindwal who admitted the custody and promised to release Nirmal Singh after his interrogation. Nirmal Singh was held for interrogation at police post of Fatehabad where the family members were allowed to see him. He was being interrogated along with Rashpal Singh from village Bhoian and Gurdeep Singh, son of Wasan singh, also of village Hothian. Nirmal Singh was seen in this police post for the last time on 14 November 1992. When the family members came thereafter to meet him, the policemen refused to let them in. They went on to meet DSP Bhupinder Singh of Goindwal and SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu of Tarn Taran several times to beseech help. But they neither helped nor gave any information. It is not clear what happened to Nirmal Singh. The family assumes that he was killed in custody and his body disposed of in a clandestine manner.

Thirty-five years old Baldev Singh was a farmer from Patti Bhan ki in Kairon village under Patti subdivision of Amritsar district. Baldev was himself unconnected with militant political activities. But his brother Gurbaksh had reacted with great emotion to the army operation against the Golden Temple and had presumably taken to arms after becoming a fugitive in late 1984. He was subsequently killed supposedly in an armed encounter with the police. For this reason, the police began to raid the house and harass the family members to find out Gurbaksh's whereabouts. Baldev had also been illegally arrested and tortured in custody for information. On 24 November 1992, Baldev along with his wife Narinder Kaur, and his cousin Amarjit Singh, went to his sister Kuldeep Kaur's house in the Radha Swami colony in Fazilka. Early in the morning of 25th November, around 5 a.m., a police party led by Naurang Singh, incharge of Kairon police post, raided Kuldeep Kaur's house after scaling the walls. Both Baldev and Amarjit were immediately nabbed. Naurang Singh tied their hands to their backs and forced them into a vehicle before driving away. Naurang Singh demanded a payment of Rs. 200,000 for the release of Amarjit and Baldev. The family managed to raise Rs. 135,000, which was handed over to Naurang Singh. Meanwhile, both Amarjit and Baldev had been brutally tortured in the custody. The information was conveyed to the family by local police constables that their condition was serious. After paying the bribe of Rs. 135,000 to Naurang Singh on 30 November 1992, the family persuaded him to allow a private doctor to examine them. Naurang Singh also assured them that both Baldev and Amarjit would be released the following day. Early next morning, the family received the message from an acquaintance that the police had taken their dead bodies for post mortem to the Patti Civil hospital. All the women relatives, including Narinder Kaur, immediately rushed to the hospital, which had been cordoned off by a large number of policemen under Naurang Singh. When they tried to enter the hospital, the policemen beat them up on orders from Naurang Singh. They were forced to go back. Two Punjabi newspapers, Ajit and Punjab Kesri dated 2 December 92, reported that the police had killed two militants in an armed encounter. One of them was identified as Amarjit Singh belonging to the Panjwar group of the Khalistan Commando Force and the other militant killed was called unidentified. The next day, the family members went to the Patti cremation ground where they found the half burnt bodies of Baldev Singh and Amarjit Singh on separate pyres. They purchased more wood and arranged for their proper cremation.

Twenty-five years old Dalbir Singh was a small farmer who along with his father Sardool Singh, mother Gopal Kaur, his wife Satwant Kaur and their two young daughters Varinder Kaur and Satinder Kaur, now fifteen and twelve, lived in village Varpal under Jandiala police station in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. On 4 June 1984, Dalbir's elder brother Lakhvir Singh had been arrested from the house on suspicion of his links with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Lakhvir never returned and his whereabouts remain unknown. Over the next years, the police continued to raid the house, damaging the property and holding Dalbir and other members of the family for interrogation under torture. Very early in the morning of 4 July 1986, Jandiala police raided Dalbir's house once again and abducted him in front of all the relatives. The same evening, he was shown to have been killed in an armed encounter. The next day's newspapers carried the news. Nineteen months after Dalbir's abduction and his reported killing in an encounter, on 5 February 1988, the police again raided the house to pick up Dalbir's father Sardool Singh. He also disappeared. Nothing is known of his whereabouts.

Dalbir Singh was a farmer living in village Khela under Goindwal police station in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. He was a baptized Sikh and an old member of the Sikh Students Federation and was a politically active person. He had become locally popular as the Secretary of the Fatehabad Cooperative Society. After the Operation Blue Star, Dalbir was very vocal in protesting against the "army invasion". In 1985, Sub-Inspector Anokh Singh of Fatehabad police post abducted Dalbir from his house and after his illegal interrogation under torture sent him to jail on a trumped up charge of indulging in arson. When he applied for bail, the government arrested him under the National Security Act. But the NSA was withdrawn three months later, and Dalbir came out of jail on bail. After his release, Dalbir decided to shift to Jalandhar where he opened a dairy farm. The business was successful, so he remained occupied. The police also did not come to arrest him again for the next three years. In 1988, SSP Gobind Ram of Batala police district led a force to raid Dalbir's house in Baldev Singh Colony in Jalandhar. On that day, one friend of Dalbir named Kanwaljit Singh, alias Waheguru, from Gurdsaspur was visiting him. The police under Gobind Ram's instructions started torturing Dalbir Singh, his wife Lakhwinder and their friend Kanwaljit right there in the house to demand the weapons they had supposedly hidden. But the thorough search yielded nothing. Gobind Ram took all the three into custody. The four young children, who were continuously screaming while their parents were being tortured in their presence, were left alone to fend for themselves. The three were taken to Beeco joint interrogation center in Batala and tortured. Lakhwinder was released after three days. Kanwaljit was killed in custody. However, a newspaper report said that he died in an armed encounter. Dalbir was arrested under TADA and sent to Amritsar jail. Again, he managed to come out on bail and returned to his dairy farm business in Batala. In 1989, Dalbir singh's father Jassa Singh died. Following this, Dalbir closed down the business in Jalandhar and returned to his village to look after his agricultural farm. The police never harassed him until the beginning of 1992 when Dalbir had an altercation with the owner of a pesticide shop in Fatehabad, who happened to be a relative of ASI Tarlochan Singh Walia. After this incident, the police from Fatehabad, Goindwal and Tarn Taran began to raid Dalbir's house again. Fearing torture and murder in custody, Dalbir began to stay away from the house. But the police kept up the pressure by repeatedly arresting and torturing his relatives. His younger brother Balkar was repeatedly tortured very severely, and asked to produce his brother before the police. During one of the frequent raids, the police also damaged the house, breaking all the window panes, other household things and demolishing the kitchen. The family estimates the value of the destroyed property to be more than Rs. 30,000. In June 1992, ASI Dalbir Singh, in-charge of Fatehabad police post, abducted Balkar Singh again and brutally tortured him to find out Dalbir's whereabouts. Unable to suffer the torture, Balkar Singh revealed that his brother was staying with his in-laws in Fatehpur Badeshan. Early next morning, a police force under ASI Dalbir Singh, accompanied by Balkar Singh, raided the house of Dalbir's in-laws. It was 4:30 in the morning and every one was sleeping. The police scaled the walls of the house to go inside. Dalbir was taken into custody in front of his wife, his father-in-law Gurbakhsh Singh, mother-in-law Swaran Kaur, his brother-in-law Nirmal Singh and his wife Paramjit Kaur. Dalbir and his brother Balkar Singh were taken back to Fatehabad police post where Surinderpal Singh, SHO of Goindwal police station, supervised Dalbir's torture. Balkar was locked up in a separate room. After some time, Balkar was taken out of the lock up into the courtyard of the police post. Dalbir, who had been chained to a tree and also handcuffed, was profusely bleeding. ASI Dalbir Singh asked Balkar Singh to say his final good-bye to his elder brother, and taunted him to find out where his brother wanted the memorial of his martyrdom built. Dalbir remained defiant and told the ASI, who was continuously hitting him with a rod, to do whatever he wanted. Later that evening, ASI Dalbir Singh released Balkar after instructing him to come back with Rs. 60,000 within some hours if he cared to see his brother alive. Balkar Singh himself was in a critical condition from his torture. He went back to the village and fell down on a cot outside a neighbor's house. He was unable to speak from exhaustion, physical pain and mental anguish. Some hours later, SHO Surinderpal Singh and ASI Dalbir Singh again raided the house and informed the family members that Dalbir had escaped from their custody. A report published in Ajit and Jagbani on 5 October 1992 said that a militant named Dalbir Singh had been killed in an armed encounter with the police near village Behla on 3 October.

Baldev Singh, 25 years old was Majhabi Sikh.He was a casual labourer. On 6 July 1990, Baldev Singh along with his wife and his father went to village Bhikhiwind to call on his in-laws. That day Bhikhiwind police along with CRPF units raided the village and rounded up all unidentified young men at the village Gurudwara for screening. Baldev was one of them. The entire village, including the headman of the village council, witnessed the operation. The police force was being led by Paramdeep Singh Teja, DSP. Baldev was detained at police station Bhikhiwind. Since then Baldev Singh's whereabouts are not known. The family believes that he got killed and his body cremated or disposed of in some other way illegally.

Eighteen years old Kuldip Singh of village Fatehabad in Amritsar district had only finished his primary school. He came from a poor family which sustained by running a small eatables stall. It was a family of devout baptized Sikhs. On the morning of 8th April 1991, a group of policemen raided his house and took him and his younger brother Hardip Singh into custody. Later that evening, Hardip was released. He had been severely tortured; also instructed to keep silent about his experiences. For the next ten days, the family did not hear anything about Kuldip except some rumors that he had already been killed. SHO Tarlochan Singh Walia of Goindwal police station denied the custody, but later demanded a bribe of Rs. 15,000 to release him. After receiving the money, SHO Walia asked the family members to reach SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu's house where they were told that Kuldip would reach home the same evening. Kuldip did not return home. The family now believes that he has been killed and his dead body secretly disposed of.

Twenty-one years old Sukhwant Singh alias Sukha was a trained electrician, but later became an apprentice driver under his father who owned a truck. He was a baptized Sikh. On 28th April 1992 morning, when Sukhwant and his father Kashmira Singh were returning to their village after reporting at the Truck Union's office at Goindwal, they were stopped at a police check post that had been set up at the railway crossing outside Goindwal. The policemen at the check post, led by SHO Goindwal Surinderpal Singh, became suspicious of Sukhwant after seeing his yellow turban and his ritual 'kirpan' that he was wearing on the outside. The police ordered Sukhwant to get into their Maruti jeep and ordered his father to go away. Kashmira had no option. He saw the police jeep going towards Fatehabad. Back in the village, Kashmira reported the incident to the village elders who went to Goindwal police station where they saw Surinderpal who, however, denied having taken Sukhwant into custody. Kashmira became very agitated, but SHO Surinderpal Singh abused him and forced him and other village elders to go away. The next day, Kashmira and his wife Jasvir Kaur went to the SSP's office at Tarn Taran who met them only to announce that their son was a hardcore militant and that they should not expect mercy. They went on pleading and touched SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu's feet. The SSP got them physically thrown out of his office. Later with help from a sympathetic policemen they went to the CIA staff interrogation center and bribed an officer there to see Sukhwant who was in a bad shape from physical torture. Sukhwant told them that they should pay any amount of money demanded by the officers. Otherwise, he would be killed. Kashmira met his son for the last time on 4th May 1992. Thereafter, there has been no news about his whereabouts. Policemen, told them that Sukhwant had been killed. But Kashmira Singh still believes that his son is alive and will come back home one day.

Ranjit Singh of Mangat Kaler village under Majitha police station in Amritsar was a helper in the Punjab Roadways. He was unmarried.Early morning of 12th September 1992, a team of police officers picked him up from the outskirts of his village. The police officials informed his father Sewa Singh that they were taking him to SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu for interrogation. On 13th September, Sewa Singh met the SSP who said that his son Ranjit would be released after interrogation. However he has not been released till date. His father does not believe a report in daily Ajit of 22nd September 1992, which said that Ranjit was killed in an "encounter". He maintains that his son is still under illegal detention of Punjab Police.

Kashmir Singh, a young farmer of village Sathiala in Beas Police Station in Amritsar district, was the only bread winner of his family. On 29th August 1992, a police team led by DSP Amar Singh Chahal from Kapurthala and SHO CIA staff Kapurthala Joginder Singh Ghora and Tirath Ram also of Kapurthala CIA staff raided the house and took Kashmir away in front of his entire family. No one knows what happened to Kashmir, whether he is alive or dead and, if dead, how and where his body got cremated.

Kashmir Singh Bhullar lived at House No. 102, 9th Street in Jagdambe Colony under Vijay Nagar police Station in Amritsar district. Kashmir along with his brother Dayal Singh. They were baptized Sikhs, very devout, but otherwise not involved in any kind of politics. They had never been arrested earlier. On 3rd November,1990 morning, a group of uniformed policemen from B. R. Model School Interrogation Center, Amritsar raided the house and took Kashmir into custody. They had already arrested Sukhchain Singh of Nehru colony in Amritsar. Dayal Singh requested SI Balbir Singh, in-charge of the Interrogation Center and an acquaintance, to help. Finding out that the police wanted to arrest him also, Dayal stayed away from the house that night. In his absence, the police took away his wife and her brother Balwinder Singh to the interrogation center. Fearing that they might get tortured, Dayal surrendered himself before the Police. On his surrender, his wife and brother-in-law were released. Few hours later, Dayal was taken for interrogation to a room in which Kashmir, Sukhchain and Resham Singh alias Pappu of Jagdambe Colony in Amritsar were being interrogated. They were all handcuffed and shackled. SI Balbir was himself conducting the interrogation. He asked them about Dayal's involvement in militant activities. All the three said that they did not know anything. Apparently unsatisfied with the answer, the Sub-Inspector started physically torturing Dayal to compel his confession. After some time, he was shackled and left in that room along with others. Dayal observed that Sukhchain's physical condition from torture was bad. He also noticed that both Kashmir and Resham had also been tortured, although less severely. All four were held in that room for the next eighteen days in the course of which they used to be separately taken out to another room and subjected to severe torture. Dayal alone was spared from torture. On 22nd November 1990, Dayal and Resham were separated from the rest, blindfolded and transferred to another location, which they later found out to be the "B" Division police station in Amritsar. Four other young men, whom they did not know, were already detained in the cell. After four days, Dayal and the other four in the cell were framed in a TADA case and produced before a magistrate, who committed them to the high security prison in Amritsar. Meanwhile, SI Balbir had been transferred from the BR Model School to the "B" Division Police Station. Chaudhary Gurmeet Chand had taken over the charge of the Interrogation Center. Dayal could not find out what happened to his brother Kashmir and the other prisoner Resham Singh who had also been to B Division police station. Ninety days later, Dayal, his wife and his brother-in-law were released on bail when the prosecution failed to submit a charge-sheet. Dayal persuaded his father-in-law to talk to SI Balbir to find out what happened to Kashmir. SI Balbir told him that he had been formally arrested and held in prison, either at Hissar or Sirsa jail. Along with his sister and other relatives, Dayal went to Hissar jail. There was a prisoner named Kashmir Singh, but his father's name did not match and the prison officials refused their application for an interview. Dayal went back to SI Balbir who suggested that they should try to find him in Sirsa jail. In that jail there was nobody under the name of Kashmir Singh. They also went to Nabha jail. Again, there was no prisoner under that name. Their investigations had come to a dead end. SI Balbir Singh refused to entertain further inquiries. Kashmir Singh's whereabouts remain unknown. No one has seen him after 22nd November 1990. Dayal had to sell off all the buffaloes of his dairy farm to sustain the efforts to locate his brother and to pursue the legal cases that had been framed against him and his family members.

Kulwant Singh, alias Kanta, was a constable with the Punjab Home Guards, and was posted at Police Post Khuali in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar. He lived with his parents at Raja Taal, under police station Sarai Amanat Khan of Tarn Taran subdivision in Amritsar district. On 29th November 1992, soon after Kulwant left his house to report on duty, ASI Balkar Singh Chheena and Inspector Dharam Singh of Khuali police post came to his house to tell his mother Balbir Kaur that her son had deserted his post along with his rifle. They took her and her second son Harpal Singh into custody as hostage to compel Kulwant to turn in. Balbir Kaur got in touch with Kulwant and made him surrender to ASI Kashmir Singh, incharge of police post Sarai Amanat Khan. Several village elders were present when Kulwant singh surrendered to Kashmir Singh and the latter took him into custody. Thereafter Kulwant disappeared. The family members tried to find out about his fate by repeatedly approaching the officials at Sarai Amanat Khan and Lopoke police stations who said that Kulwant got transferred to Mal Mandi Interrogation Center for questioning. Balbir Kaur, however, believes that her son is alive and held incommunicado.

Kesar Singh, alias Bapu, was a resident of village Pandori Rehmana under Jhabal police station of Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district. In June,1992 he was charged under TADA and sent to Amritsar jail. One year later, in May 1993, while he was still in Amritsar jail, the Jhabal police obtained a judicial warrant to interrogate him in connection with some terrorist offence. Five days after taking him, the police declared him 'escaped from the police custody'. However, the family members received a letter from him disclosing that he was still under illegal detention at Verowal police station. Reports on his supposed escape was carried by many Punjabi newspapers of 13th September 1993. Later his other relatives, Baba Charan Singh and five other male members of his family were taken away by Ajit Singh Sandhu, the then SSP of Taran Taran in 1993 and since then their whereabouts were not known. His wife Surjit Kaur, approached the High Court which ordered a judicial inquiry from Sessions Judge, Amritsar. Sessions judge in his report ruled that it had not been conclusively proved that Baba Charan Singh and his five relatives, Baba Meja Singh, Baba Gurdev Singh, both brothers of Kesar Singh, Gurmej Singh, Baba Charan Singh's brother-in-law, Gurmej's son Balwinder Singh, Meja Singh's brother-in-law Lakha Singh, were indeed picked up by the then SSP of Taran Taran or his men. But the court considered the plea that six male members of one family could not have evaporated and that the State was duty bound to provide information about their whereabouts as right to life is the basic human rights. It held that "it is a matter of grave concern that six male members of one family are reported missing and nothing has been done to trace them or furnish any reliable information regarding them as to whether they are alive or dead. The State cannot escape its responsibility." The High Court ordered a CBI inquiry into the incident and the CBI has filed a chargesheet against the erring cops in the court.

Boor Singh, a seventy years old farmer was a blind person. His youngest son Arjan Singh, was suspected by the police of having terrorist links. The family lived at village Sehnsra Kalan, under Jhander police station in Ajnala subdivision of Amritsar district. The police had been routinely raiding the farm house and harassing the family members because of their suspicions about Arjan, so they began to live elsewhere. On 5th March 1992, Arjan Singh was arrested from the Anandpur Sahib Gurudwara in Ropar district by a police party led by SHO Wassan Singh of Jhander Police Station. The next day, Arjan was shown killed in a supposed armed encounter that was allegedly orchestrated near village Sehnsra Khurd. The body was not handed over to the family. The cremation itself was traced to Amritsar cremation ground and the family collected the ashes. This was not the end of the story. On the night of 27th August, 1992 a large group of policemen raided the farmhouse when Boor Singh was alone. The police opened heavy fire on the farm house and later took the blind old man into custody. The next day, members of the family along with village elders went to Police Station Khatrai Kalan. However, no official there listened to them. They went on to meet the IG Bhatti and begged him to get their totally blind and innocent father released. In stead of help, the police conducted one more raid to demolish the house and also to confiscate all household belongings. Boor Singh could not be located thereafter and there has been no news about him till date.

Forty years old Gurpal Singh, alias Pala, and his wife Kamaljit Kaur were employees of the Punjab State Electricity Board at Hamira, Distt.Amritsar. Their family comprised Gurpal's old father and mother, and their two young children. They lived in village Gagrewal under police station Verowal in Khadur Sahib subdivision of Amritsar district. On 9th April 1992, Gurpal along with his wife Kamaljit Kaur were cycling down to Gagrewal Bus Stand from where they used to catch a bus to Rayya to go to work. On that day, they wanted to help Gurpal's brother-in-law in purchasing some household things and were waiting for him outside a hardware shop when SHO Wassan Singh of Beas police station drove up in a jeep and directed Gurpal to come to him. As Gurpal Singh came close to the jeep, some policemen jumped out and dragged him inside the vehicle, and sped away. His wife Kamaljeet Kaur, who witnessed the abduction, immediately informed his family and also the Electricity Board office at Rayya on telephone. SHO Wassan Singh was approached, who acknowledged the arrest and promised to release him after interrogation. On 10 April 1992, several members of the family again met SHO Wassan Singh who said that Gurpal was yet to recover from the injuries inflicted upon him during the torture. He promised that Gurpal would return home as soon as he became better. On 15th April 1992, the SHO said that Gurpal had been taken to Kapurthala for further questioning. But DSP Mann told his wife, that they should not waste any more time as he had been killed. He also suggested that she would receive compensation that her husband had been kidnapped and killed by terrorists. The family members of Gurpal approached every authority to get an FIR registered regarding Gurpal's abduction. But the police refused to register the same.

Bupinder Singh, alias Toti, was a post-graduate student of geography at Punjabi University, Patiala. He was a baptized Sikh and was deeply involved in the Sikh problem and sordid situation in Punjab. He used to organize religious and quasi-political functions for the students in the university, and was well known for his activities. Bhupinder's father Joginder Singh, a teacher in a government school, and other members of his family lived in village Alipur, under Nabha Sadar police station of Patiala district. Inspector Surjit Singh Grewal disliked Bhupinder's extracurricular activities, and had picked him up a number of times for interrogation. Grewal had also accused Bhupinder of distributing sweets in the university campus after Rajiv Gandhi got assassinated in. But he could not do much as the University authorities, including the Vice Chancellor protected him being a brilliant student, and got him out of illegal custody whenever Grewal took him in. Although Grewal was later transferred to the Punjab Armed Police center at Bahadargarh in Patiala, he had developed a personal enmity with Bhupinder Singh. Once Grewal called some students of the Patiala University, including Maninder Singh Kaku, a student of law and now a lawyer, to his house. Grewal asked them to bring Bhupinder to his house, so that he could advise him to avoid trouble with the police. On 20th August 1992, Maninder Singh Kaku, Advocate took Bhupinder and his elder brother Balwinder to DSP Grewal's house. Balwinder waited outside, while Bhupinder and Kaku went in. After some time, Kaku came out to say that the officer wanted a private talk with Bhupinder and had promised to do him no harm. Kaku and Bhupinder went back, but Bhupinder never returned. The next day, the police picked up Bhupinder's father Master Joginder Singh and tortured him severely at the CIA staff interrogation center in Patiala. He was illegally detained there and tortured for eight days. DSP Grewal personally warned him not to make any hue and cry about his son; otherwise, he would also be eliminated.

Jaswant Singh alias Jassa, a resident of Village Kaleke in Amritsar district was picked up by a police party from his residence on November 8,1992 and shown killed in a fake encounter on November 16, 1992. In 1995 the Supreme Court ordered a CBI Inquiry and the inquiry revealed that the police story of an encounter was a cock and bull story and S.P. Balkar Singh, SI's Paramjit Singh, Satwant Singh and Sukhdev Singh and ASI Narinder Singh had indeed killed him in police custody. The trial of the case is awaiting the sanction of the State government for the prosecution of the guilty policemen.

Tarlochan Singh was a young farmer of village Sehke near Amargarh in Malerkotla subdivision of Sangrur district. The police suspected him of being involved in the militancy movement. On 10th February 1993, his father Jagjit Singh and other village elders went to SSP Raj Kishan Singh Bedi of Khanna police and got Tarlochan surrendered, to stop the harassment to his family in future. Tarlochan was implicated in a TADA case and sent to Nabha jail. On 13th March 1993, DSP Sukhdev Singh Brar of Malerkotla police obtained his police remand in connection with some other matter. The next day itself, he was declared 'escaped from police custody'. Nothing was heard about him after that.

Amandeep Singh was a young student at Guru Nanak College in Batala,distt Gurdaspur. His father Balraj Singh was a teacher in the government primary school and lived in Madre village under Batala subdivision of Gurdaspur district. In December 1990, Balraj Singh was mugged on his way to the school by a group of young Sikh boys, presumably militants, who snatched his motorcycle (Registration Plate Number: PIA 135). Some days later, the Border Security Force recovered the stolen motorcycle, and deposited it at Dhariwal police station. Amandeep was taken into illegal custody and his father was asked to prove that he had purchased the motorcycle, and that it had actually been robbed. Amandeep was released from the illegal custody after eight days when Balraj Singh satisfied the authorities that he was the genuine owner and that he had been mugged. On 18th March 1991, Amandeep and Jasbir Singh, a fellow student from his own village, left for their college in Batala by a Punjab roadways bus No. PBN 1119. On the way, SHO Makhan Singh and ASP Gurmel Singh stopped the bus and picked both of them. Many natives of village Madre, including Master Shiv Singh and Kashmir Singh, were travelling in the same bus and witnessed the arrests. Both were taken back to their village Madre where the officers searched Jasbir's house. Later they were taken away by the Police. On 20th March 1991 a Hindi newspaper, reported two separate incidents of police encounters in which five 'militants' had been shown killed. The first incident had allegedly occurred at Sakoda village in Gurdaspur district when some 'militants' reportedly attacked a joint patrol of the BSF and the Punjab police, who fired back in self defence and killed three militants identified as Jagbir Singh, Hardev Singh and Satnam Singh. Jagbir had been arrested along with Amandeep. The other two were also from the neighboring villages. The second incident was reported to have taken place in Pathankot district. The newspaper story said that some militants attacked the police team to rescue Kamaljit Singh, who was being taken to village Lamiri to recover weapons. Kamaljit and one unidentified militant were killed when the police fired back in self-defence. The newspaper reporting of the incidents was based on a press briefing the SSP had held on 19 March. The same evening the SSP had told Balraj Singh that Amandeep's interrogation was in progress. Balraj Singh suspected that the unidentified militant reported to have been killed in the second incident might be Amandeep. But SSP Goyal had told him that the interrogation was continuing. On 27th March,1991 a Punjabi paper identified the second person killed in the 18th March encounter at Pathankot as Amandeep Singh of Madre village. Once again, SSP Goyal had briefed the press to clarify the identity. By then the police had already carried out the cremation. Balraj Singh went to Pathankot and met the father of Kamaljit Singh, the supposed militant Amandeep had reportedly tried to rescue from the police custody. Kamaljit Singh's father, a priest of the local Gurudwara, told him that he had attended the cremations and had also collected the ashes of the second person, reported unidentified, who had been killed along with his son. The old man was unable to give a coherent description of the body.

Amrik Singh, alias Mangu, a young man of Ghanauri Kalan village under Sherpur police station of Dhuri subdivision in Sangrur district. On 31st May 1992, SHO Darshan Singh of Dhuri police station led a police team to arrest Amrik from his shop. At that time Amrik's younger brother Darshan Singh was also present there. Nothing was heard about Amrik after that.

Forty years old Major Singh was the head of his village council Hathur under Jagraon subdivision of Ludhiana district. On 3rd May 1993, SHO Rachhpal Singh of Nihal Singhwala police station in Faridkot district led a team of officers to raid Major Singh's house and took him into illegal custody along with his two brothers-in-law Balbir Singh and Jagtar Singh, and his nephew Amarjit Singh. One week after these arrests, SHO Ajaib Singh of Hathur police post came with another team of police men to destroy the house and to carry away all the valuable goods. After this incident, when the family members and other village elders went to SHO Rachhpal Singh of Nihal Singhwala police station, he allowed them to meet Major Singh who was in the lock-up and under interrogation. The family members continued to meet him there till 13th May 1993. The SHO was demanding two hundred thousand rupees to release Major Singh, one hundred and fifty thousand rupees each for the release of Balbir and Jagtar. The family members had no choice but to raise the amounts of bribe money, being demanded from them. They also handed over the truck which was, however, used subsequently to implicate Amarjit's brother-in-law Hardeep, his nephew Amarjit, one Nachhatter Singh Fauji from Daudhar village and two others in a supposed terrorist act. Major Singh was not released inspite of paying the bribe and his whereabouts were not known thereafter. On a petition being filed by the family members in the Supreme Court, an inquiry was ordered to be conducted by Sessions Judge Amar Dutt. The inquiry report supported the police claim that Major Singh had been killed in an incident of armed combat between militants and the police force.

Manmohan Singh (35), was employed at Guru Nanak Dev Rice Mills in Jagraon. He was the breadearner of his family consisting of three young children, his wife and 70 years old mother, who all lived in Jagraon. Manmohan had no political or criminal involvement, and had never been arrested before. On 3rd May 1993, he was taken from his house by a police party led by SI Joginder Singh and other policemen from Jagraon's CIA staff office. Two days after his abduction, the police officials brought Manmohan back to the house to search for his bank papers. They also forced him to withdraw 150,000 rupees from his account. Thereafter, the police claimed that Manmohan escaped from their custody. The news about his escape was carried by daily Ajit on 7th May 1993 on the basis of press note issued by the Punjab police.

Daljit Singh, alias Jeeta, was a farmer of Jhawan village under Tanda police station of Hoshiarpur district who also sang religious hymns at Gurudwaras during festivals. Daljit had been detained illegally a number of times for interrogation on the suspicion of having links with militants. But he was never formally charged of any offence though in early 1990 his brother-in-law Joginder Singh, son of Mehar Singh from Kulara village in Hoshiarpur district was killed in a fake incident of armed encounter. On 23rd October 1990, Daljit along with his wife Baljinder Kaur, went to Behram village to see a relative. That night Daljit was taken into custody from the house of Bhajan Singh in Behram village by Inspector Joginder Singh Ghora of the CIA staff Hoshiarpur during a raid in the house. Daljit has been missing since then with no news of his whereabouts.

Forty years old Saroop Singh, of Nangal Khunga village under Tanda police station in Dasuya subdivision of Hoshiarpur district, was an ex-serviceman. He was engaged in farming business. He was also a member of the Akali Dal and had taken part in the Sikh agitation and had courted arrest on many occasions. He had also been arrested, in early 1989, on the charge of sheltering a terrorist. But he was released on bail in March 1989. On 30th April 1989, a police party led by Inspector Sardul Singh of Dasuya police station came to the village to arrest Saroop Singh, who was not at home. The police officials humiliated his family members and other village residents, telling them that they will all be killed unless Saroop was handed over to the police. On 26th May, a delegation of village elders accompanied Saroop Singh to the Dasuya police station, where he was taken into custody. Few days later, the police also picked up his father Preetam Singh and also interrogated him at Dasuya police station where he saw his son. Saroop had been badly tortured and could not even stand up. Ajit Singh Sandhu was the DSP of Dasuya. Preetam was released after the illegal detention, after seven days. On 25th May, he met his son Saroop Singh again at Hajipur police station where he had been shifted for further interrogation. The next day, it was announced that Swaroop had escaped from the police custody. Although his whereabouts remain completely unknown, Inspector Sardul Singh told a local politician that Saroop was being held in a secret place and would eventually got released. The police had also arrested Vikram Singh son of Jaswant Singh from village Khudda in Hoshiarpur Distt, along with Swaroop. Vikram has also disappeared.

Harpinder Singh (20), was a student and lived with his family in village Phool of district Bathinda. The police used to harass Harpinder Singh and his family for his association with All India Sikh Students Federation. Harpinder left his home and became a fugitive in September 1991.On 21st January 1992, Amandeep Kaur, sister of Harpinder Singh was shot dead outside their house by two unidentified gunmen believed to be the agents of SSP Bhatinda. It is said that the motive was to silence her from speaking about her custodial experiences. Harpinder himself was killed in a supposed armed encounter, as reported in the newspapers dated 26th and 27th June, 1992. His Father Jaswant Singh claims that the so called encounter was fake. Harpinder was shown killed along with Darshan Singh Kotli and Jasbir Singh Latala. All were cremated by the police at Bhatinda cremation ground as unclaimed and unidentified dead bodies. According to father Jaswant Singh, the police had also picked up Gurjant Singh Joga from Gurudwara Gurusar on 15th September, 1991 and killed him in another fake encounter the next day. According to him, Surinder Pal Singh of Sarhali police station abducted Baba Hardayal Singh and his daughter Baljit Kaur and later killed them.

Gurdeep Singh(19), a resident of village Kurali of Ropar district, was a student at the local ITI. On 5th February 1993, Gurdeep's mother Manjit Kaur was taken into illegal custody by Ropar CIA and badly tortured for their links with militants. SHO Avtar Singh of Kharar police station personally tortured her for getting information about Jagtar Singh Panjaula, supposedly a member of the Babbar Khalsa, who was their relative. Manjit Kaur did not know his whereabouts and could not give any information. She was released after one week following pressure from the residents of the locality. On March 6, 1993 morning, SHO Avtar Singh raided the house of Manjit Kaur's parents in Kubaheri village in Ropar district and took Gurdeep into custody. When village elders along with Manjit Kaur, went to the Kharar police station later that day, they found Gurdeep in the police lock up. He had already been tortured very badly and was bleeding. SHO Avtar Singh told them that Gurdeep Singh would be released after his interrogation in some days. On 11th March, Manjit Kaur along with elders of the village. They were asked to meet SSP Sanjeev Gupta. When they went to meet him, SSP Gupta ordered his subordinates to take Manjit Kaur into custody. At his command, Manjit Kaur was detained again for fifteen days at CIA staff interrogation center in Ropar and later Kharar police station and again tortured during interrogation. Her father Dharam Singh and mother Gurdial Kaur were also arrested and held in Kharar police station with the view to terrorize them. While Manjit Kaur was being illegally detained at CIA Satff office in Ropar, she claims to have seen the police administer cyanide to two separate groups of six young Sikhs, after brutally torturing them. Manjit Kaur's brother Bant Singh Aujla was also arrested and interrogated at Chamkaur Sahib police station where he saw Gurdeep Singh on 7th April, 1993. SHO Avtar Singh released Manjit Kaur and her parents fifteen days later after receiving a bribe from her family. The tale of her woes was published in the English Tribune dated 27-9-1995 and in the Punjabi Ajit on 17-12-1995. Gurdeep Singh was neither released from the custody nor he was seen or heard of after this incident. Manjit Kaur's brother met him in Chamkaur Sahib police station on 7th April, 1993. On 18th August, 1997, Manjit Kaur filed a petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court which was disposed of with the observation that the petitioner was free to file a criminal complaint in the local court of competent jurisdiction.

Balwinder Singh(22), was a truck driver from Jalalabad village under Verowal police station in Khadur Sahib subdivision of Amritsar district. On 14th March 1992, Balwinder came to the house after parking the truck at its owner's place in the city. He took a bath and was relaxing when some police officials in uniform along with four soldiers from the 4 Sikh Light Infantry raided the house and took Balwinder into custody. The police officials refused to identify themselves and said that they wanted Balwinder Singh for questioning. On the evening of 16th March, the same police officials took Balwinder and another boy Gurbachan Singh to Mand area for some search operations. The same evening, Balwinder's father Charan Singh was also taken into custody when he was returning home after grazing his cattle. All the family members witnessed the arrest and also saw Balwinder who had apparently been tortured. Charan Singh was taken to Fatudhinga police station and held there for a night. Balwinder was taken away to some unknown place. In the police lock-up, Charan Singh found out from a constable that Balwinder was being taken to Sultanpur in Kapurthala district and that the officer responsible for his arrest and interrogation was one DSP Chahal. That was the last time Balwinder was seen alive. Charan Singh was let off the next day when he went to Sultanpur and Kapurthala to trace his son. But the officials there denied Balwinder's custody. On 17th March 1992, Punjabi newspapers reported that one Balwinder Singh has been killed in an armed encounter with the police. The dead body of Balwinder was not returned to the family. Father Charan Singh reports that after this incident the police abducted and killed at least five other persons from his village. He mentions the names of Swaran Singh, Sodhi Lakha Singh, Sakattar Singh, Gurmeet Singh and Dalbir Singh Maddu, all from his village.

Harjit Singh(19), a first year student at the Punjabi university, Patiala, used to live with his parents at Village Janherian, under Sadar police station Patiala. He was a baptized Sikh, a budding sportsman .He never had any trouble with the police before. On 7th April 1991, he went to the university to take private tuition from a professor, but did not come back home. Around 10.30 that night, SHO Harbhajan Singh from Sadar police station came to the house with other policemen to ask about Harjit. His father Jarnail Singh told him that he had gone to the university in the morning, but had not come back home, that the family was worried because of that. On hearing this, SHO Harbhajan Singh asked him to come along to the Sadar police station. On 3rd May,1991, Jarnail Singh read a statement issued by SSP Muhammad Mustafa of Ropar, which said that two terrorists, Nishan Singh Saifdipur and Harjit Singh Janherian, were killed in an encounter with the police near village Manakpur Kaler under police station Sohana. After reading the newspaper report, Jarnail Singh met the SSP of Ropar in his office who told them that Harjit Singh had been killed in an encounter. Concrete evidence of Harjit Singh having been killed in custody emerged only one year later, when the family organized a religious ceremony to mark the first anniversary of Harjit's death. One Baldev Singh from village Baran in Patiala also came to attend the ceremony. He told Jarnail Singh that Sub-Inspector Balwant Singh Kauharia of Ropar CIA had raided his house on 1st May 1991. During the raid, both Harjit Singh and Nishan Singh Saifdipur were also in the police custody. Balwant Singh's mother, who was present in the house during the raid, also saw Harjit Singh and Nishan Singh. Balwant Singh was arrested and taken to the CIA Interrogation Center in Ropar along with Harjit and Nishan. Later that night, the three of them were segregated. Balwant Singh, who had now come out on bail, was sent to prison after ten days of illegal custody. Later on, Deputy Commissioner of Ropar ordered an enquiry into the incident, entrusting the investigation to one officer Dalip Singh of Ropar. When Jarnail Singh met him to pursue the inquiry, this officer told him that he was under police pressure and, for that reason, was opting out of the inquiry. Dalip Singh asked him to pursue the matter with the Deputy Commissioner of Ropar. Finding out few days later that the inquiry had been transferred to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Kharar, Jarnail went the SDM's office to find out. There a lady clerk showed him the file and told him that the SDM would not be able to complete the inquiry because of the police pressure that was coming from very high levels.

Sewa Singh, 48, was a member of the Akali Dal from village Gharuan Uchand under Kharar subdivision in Ropar district. He was a baptized Sikh . After the Operation Blue Star, the police began to harass him and his family, picking them up arbitrarily, holding them in illegal detention for long periods and torturing them during interrogation. The police also used to regularly abduct Sewa Singh's twenty-two years old nephew Jagjit Singh, son of Hardial Singh, and torture him during interrogation. On 6 May 1987, Jagjit was arrested formally under TADA and sent to jail where he remained for ten months, securing release on bail thereafter. But the police continued to illegally detain and torture him. Fed up by the harassment, Jagjit left his house and joined the ranks of militants. The police began to harass the family much more after Jagjit became a fugitive. In 1989, Sewa Singh was implicated in a case under the Arms Act and sent to Patiala jail. He secured release on bail after three months. Meanwhile, Jagjit had been killed in an armed encounter, along with four others, that had supposedly taken place on 28th October 1990 between a group of militants and the Ludhiana police near village Ucha Pind. Even after his death, the police continued to harass the family, regularly detained Sewa Singh illegally, and questioning him under torture about his militant connections. On 16 August 1992, Sewa Singh was again picked up by the DSP H. P. Singh Kalewal of Kharar and tortured severely at CIA staff office in Ropar for a month. When on 17th September 1992, he was brought back home by his brothers, Nasib Singh and Hardial Singh, his physical condition from custodial torture was very critical. He was unable even to walk. Exactly two days later, early in the morning of 18th September 1992, a strong police force led by DSP Gurcharan Singh of Mohali again raided Sewa Singh's house. He was physically lifted and thrown into a waiting vehicle and driven away. The entire neighborhood and the family members, including Hardial Singh, his wife Charan Kaur and Sewa Singh's wife Ajaib Kaur witnessed the abduction. Nobody heard of him after that.

Arur Singh,55, of Manochahal Kalan village under Jhabal police station in Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district was an employee of the SGPC and was also related to the militant leader Gurbachan Singh Manochahal. On 12th December 92, he was called to the police post as the police wanted to ask him some questions regarding his tractor which some unidentified persons had taken away on 31st June 1992. Arur Singh returned home on 15th December and immediately went to the Manochahal police post along with few other persons of the village. In the evening, he was seen in the Police Post. He had visibly been tortured very badly. He was not able even to eat. Early in the morning of 17th December,1992, Jasbir Kaur went to the police post again. Arur Singh had been taken out of the lock-up to for going to toilet. Jasbir Kaur saw him walking back from the toilet to the lock-up. Both his hands were hanging limp. They had been fractured. Arur Singh told her to pursue his case vigorously. "Otherwise, I would be killed," he told her. Later he was shifted to unknown place and the relatives were turned down by the police. On 28th December,1992, Jasbir Kaur met SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu at his office through someone who was close to him and paid Rs. 150,000, which he had demanded for Arur Singh's release. SSP Sandhu told her to collect Arur Singh from Jhabal police station the next day morning. When Jasbir Kaur, accompanied by several relatives, went to Jhabal police station on 29th morning, the SHO there told them that there was no one with that name in their lock-up. He also told them that as an armed encounter had taken place on the Canal road near village Dode, they should go to the Civil Hospital in Tarn Tarn to find out if Arur Singh is among the killed. By now someone had seen the newspapers that reported an armed encounter in which three identified and one unidentified militants had been killed near Dode. Arur Singh's name was in the list of the identified terrorists. Immediately, Jasbir Kaur and other relatives went to the Civil Hospital in Tarn Taran where the Jhabal police brought four dead bodies for post-mortem. Jasbir Kaur was not allowed to go near them, but she was able to identify Arur Singh's body from a distance. The family members did not dare to demand the body for cremation. They were afraid. Jasbir Kaur went back to the village to persuade the village elders to accompany her to claim the dead body for the cremation. But they also refused to oblige. The police carried out the cremations at Tarn Taran Cremation grounds. The other two, who had been identified, were Ram Singh from village Sur Singh and Resham Singh from village Kuharka.

Gurmej Kaur, 64, was the mother of Gurbachan Singh Manochahal, a so-called "A" category terrorist and the head of the Bhindranwale Tiger Force. She lived at the family village house at village Manochahal Kalan of Amritsar district. She had four sons. The first two had been killed by the police. Like other members of the family, Gurmej Kaur was being constantly harassed for the reason that she was Gurbachan's mother. She had already been detained and tortured a number of times. To avoid further torture, she had been shifting her residence and, at the time of her abduction, was living at the house of Surjit Singh at Katra Sher Singh in Amritsar. On 15th September 1992, DSP Gurmeet Singh Randhawa from the Tarn Taran CIA staff raided the house of Surjit Singh in Amritsar and took Gurmej Kaur to the CIA staff office in Tarn Taran. Apparently, she was detained and tortured there, and later on shifted to other police stations. Gurmej Kaur was seen alive for the last time on 16th March 1993, at Verowal police post by her sisters, in illegal custody. Later it was found that Gurmej Kaur had been killed after the capture of Gurbachan Singh. Her dead body was thrown into the river near Harike Pattan.Tarlochan Singh Manochahal, his younger son met the SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu few days later to find out what happened to his mother. Ajit Singh Sandhu said: "We intend to liquidate the entire Manochahal family. I do not know how you managed to escape! Anyhow, now you should forget the past, and concentrate on the future." Tarlochan Singh, in his Incident-Report, gives the following list of people belonging to the family and other associates, who got abducted and killed in illegal police custody :
1. Father Atma Singh
2. Brother Nirvail Singh Manochahal
3. Cousin Balwinder Singh Manochahal
4. Cousin Mahinder Singh Manochahal
5. Cousin Harjinder Singh Manochahal
6. Arur Singh Manochahal
7. Balwinder Singh from village Pandori Golan
8. Dial Singh from Chohla Sahib
9. Nirmal Singh, alias Nimma, from Pandori Golan
10. Tarlok Singh Bhullar from Karam Singh Wala

Sarpanch Major Singh, 37, was a farmer and a transporter in Burj Kalara village under Hathur police Station in Jagraon subdivision of Ludhiana district. In the evening of 3rd May 1993, Rachpal Singh, SHO of Nihal Singh Wala police station, raided Major Singh's house along with other policemen and took him, his two brothers-in-law, Balbir Singh and Jagtar Singh, and his nephew Amarjit Singh into custody. All of them were taken to Nihal Singh Wala police station. Immediately, the family members went to the police station where SHO Rachpal Singh demanded Rs. 1,50,000 to release Major Singh, Rs. 2,00,000 to release his brothers-in-law, and his truck. The family members gave him the money as also the truck that he demanded. But SHO Rashpal Singh used the truck to show an encounter in which Amarjit Singh, a relative of Major Singh and four other unidentified persons were shown killed. Later on, newspapers reported Major Singh's own death in a supposed encounter. But the body was not handed over to the family, nor were they given any information regarding the place of cremation. Major Singh's mother Mahinder Kaur filed a petition before the Supreme Court who ordered an inquiry by Chandigarh's Session's Judge.

On May 18, 1992, Amritsar police picked up Param Satinderjit Singh, a student of Guru Nanak Dev University, from the university campus in Amritsar. He was forced to identify suspected sympathisers of the separatist cause within the university, who were also picked up. The police brought Param Satinderjit Singh to the university campus several times for this purpose. The university students held a demonstration to protest against the abduction, and his father went on a hunger strike. But Param Satinderjit Singh was not released. There was no trace of him thereafter.

Twenty-five years old Gurnam Singh was a young Sikh man from village Dabwala Kalan under Ghaniye Ke Bangar police station in Batala subdivision of Gurdaspur district. He was a baptized Sikh and active in Sikh religious and political activities. After the Operation Blue Star in June 1984, when Gurnam was being regularly picked up illegally by Batala police and tortured brutally in their custody and harassed all his family members he got fed up with this constant harassment, and left his house and became a militant. Gurnam's becoming a militant invited unceasing troubles for the rest of the family. Batala police began to pick up other members of the family, including his father Shingara Singh, his mother Mahinder Kaur, his brothers Avtar Singh and Rachhpal Singh, Rachhpal's wife Harjit Kaur and several other relatives. They were kept regularly in illegal custody and tortured for information on Gurnam's whereabouts. His father Shingara Singh, and his brothers Avtar Singh and Hardial Singh were implicated in cases under TADA on charges of harboring terrorists. Later, they were acquitted after trial by special courts. In November 1988, Inspector Santa Singh of CIA staff and SHO Gurpal Singh of Batala Sadar Station picked up Gurnam's third brother Rachhpal Singh and his wife Harjit Kaur. First, both of them were brutally tortured in front of villagers. They were beaten up with canes. Harjit Kaur was publicly humiliated and tortured with a thick wooden roller pressed on her thighs by four policemen, and by other methods. After their public torture in the village itself, Rachhpal Singh and Harjit Kaur were taken to the Sadar police station. There again, they were tortured brutally under the supervision of Anil Kumar Sharma, SP (Head Quarters), but were finally released after one week at the intervention from the village council. Throughout this period, the family members, including their women, suffered extreme brutality. On 13th December 1988, the family got to know that Batala police from village Umarpura had arrested Gurnam. The family members found out that Gurnam Singh was tortured at Beeco Interrogation Center and in the night of 21st January 1989 he was shot dead near the bridge of village Jagle, in a so-called armed encounter, along with Sukhdev Singh from village Khode. Gurnam was described as an unidentified terrorist. Punjabi newspaper, Ajit carried a report on the so-called encounter in its issue dated 23 January 1989. The encounter was reported to have taken place between a group of militants and Batala police officers led by SP (Operations) Harbhajan Singh. The body was not returned to the family and was cremated by the police at an unknown place. Gurmej Singh, a former police constable who had been lodged in jail after his arrest for helping the militants, corroborated the information. He revealed that he had been lodged at Beeco Interrogation Center along with Gurnam Singh from 11th December 1988 till 21st January 1989. That night the police had taken Gurnam Singh out of the lock up and killed him in a supposed encounter. According to him, Gurnam Singh had been tortured brutally, before his murder, by SSP Gobind Ram, SP (Head Quarters) Anil Kumar Sharma and Inspector Santa Singh.

Many International human rights organizations like Amnesty International also reported several cases of false encounters in Punjab during 1986-1989. One such case as reported in the Amnesty report in 1989 reads as under:-

"Rajinder Pal Singh Gill, an Assistant Professor in Horticulture at Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana, was reportedly arrested on January 25,1989 in Chandigarh by the Ludhiana Police. The police refused to give any information about the arrest or whereabouts until February 15, 1989 when the Ludhiana police announced that he had been killed an encounter with the police, together with two others on the night of January, 26, 1989 at Khehra Bet, Ludhiana. He had reportedly been seen in custody at Sadar Police Station on 25 and 26 January, 1989." The omnibus description of 'encounter deaths' covered a hundred brutalities on the part of the police. The State terrorism of this kind unleashed by Ribeiro and KPS Gill resulted not only in the liquidation of 'identified' and 'unidentified' militants in fake encounters but was also responsible for liquidating the families of the militants and their sympathizers. Their houses were set on fire. Their womenfolk were taken into custody and molested. Brutal torture at Batala of two young women, Gurdev Kaur and Gurmeet Kaur by SSP, Gobind Ram with a view to force them to produce their husbands missing for several years, led to a lot of public outcry. The two women were rendered incap-acitated.

The house of a militant Balwinder Singh Jattana in Village Jattana, near Chandigarh was torched by Punjab police in 1991 and four members of his family included his 95 years old grand-mother and three children were burnt alive, in retaliation of an unsuccessful attempt allegedly made by his group to blow off the vehicle of the then SSP of Chandigarh, Mr. Sumedh Saini.

Amrik Singh, an automobile mechanic of Village Patran in district Patiala and his brother Bhagwant Singh was picked up by a police party led by SHO Jaspal Singh and taken to police station. There Amrik Singh was brutally tortured at the behest of one police informer, Surjit Singh Sarpanch and his condition became very serious. The next day, both were shifted to Shutrana Police Post where Amrik Singh was again beaten, but he succumbed to his injuries. The police alleged that he had committed suicide. The mutiliated body of the deceased was handed over to the parents after getting some blank papers signed from them. His mother filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 1995 and a CBI inquiry was ordered which indicted the police officers and they are still facing trial in the court at Patiala.

Gamdoor Singh, a dalit youth was among many persons of district Sangrur picked up by the Railway Police in November, 1995. On November 23,1995 he was handed over to his relatives in a serious condition. He was rushed to hospital and given medical treatment but he succumbed to his injuries within hours. His post mortem showed four broken ribs and 18 other serious bodily injuries. The Punjab & Haryana High Court ordered the registration of a case against a DSP and Police Inspector for the crime and they are still undertrials in the case.

After Ribeiro was made Advisor to the Governor of Punjab, KPS Gill, an Assam cadre IPS officer with shady antecedents, was made the DGP of the State in 1988. This signalled the unleashing of state repression on an unprecedented scale. Gill had already earned notoriety in Assam for his cold-blooded policies. During this time, Corruption in police force grew to giant proportions. Gill asserted that a police officer's performance would be judged solely on the basis of his success in neutralizing the militants. He had a very strange logic that " the police were dealing with people who did not believe in any laws and so unless the police too was lawless it could not really fight against them." He allured his men to kill anybody they liked and to hold press conferences to make their "catches" public. Planting of misinformation helped him to make indiscriminate arrests and indulge in extra-judicial killings. The difference between suspicion and sure knowledge having been blurred by the catch-all provisions of TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act), the police often arrested and killed people to please their bosses with the largest number of 'catches' or to settle old scores. Amnesty International reports 1988-92 listed innumerable cases of killings and deaths in custody. A report presented to the American Congress on January 19, 1993 contained a specific description of encounter killings:

"In Punjab there were credible reports that police in particular continued to engage in fake encounter killings. In the typical scenario, police take into custody suspected militants or militant supporters without filing an arrest report. If the detainee dies during interrogation or is executed, officials deny that he was ever in custody and claim that he died during an armed encounter with the police or the security forces. Afterwards the bodies reportedly are sometimes moved to distant police districts for disposal, making identification and investigation more difficult".

The stories go on and on. The thousand and one tales of tragedy. It requires volumes for the entire tale of killings and tortures to describe exhaustively. This may be a tip of an iceberg. Such cases are no aberration-it was too patterned and widespread to merit that conclusion. The macabre state in which the people of Punjab were, is heart wrenching. The State-sponsored terrorism, violence due to retributive emotions, the interrogations which leave people mentally and physically crippled etc. all these add up to a never ending spiral of revenge and violence and this has taken a heavy toll on the psyche of the people. Government records regarding hundreds of inquiries into false encounters are still kept secret, manipulated or even destroyed. The media information in this regard had been casual, censored, politically manipulated and arithmetically distorted. There was substantial evidence that the government and official agencies have made special efforts to cover-up human rights violations and prevent the police and security forces from being punished. The government seldom released the names and lists of the victims of state violence. For more than a decade, the Punjab police assumed the charge of the State and killed thousands of Sikhs branding them as "terrorists". Hundreds of thousands more were arbitrarily arrested and whisked away to undisclosed place or just made to disappear and yet more have been put to such tortures and tyrannies which put to shame the horror stories and make a mockery of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Indian Constitution. Extra-judicial executions of the suspected militants and sympathizers were carried out as part of a deliberate shoot-to-kill strategy conceived by senior police and civil administration officials. In their efforts to find and kill the militants, Punjab police went berserk, conducted massive search operations, frequently arresting persons who may merely have lived in an area known to be frequented by militant groups or who may have belonged to an organization supporting the militants. The scenario became dismal. Armed with laws that crush the right to live on vendetta or vicious suspicion or sadistic pleasure, if a policeman shot or broke the bones of anyone, he had only to use the alibi of a suspected terrorist. Various human rights bodies in the State investigated many cases of human rights violations in the State. A committee headed by Justice Ajit Singh Bains (Retd.) inquired into the shooting of four young sikh students in police firing in Nakodar on March 19, 1986 and held the police responsible for the killings. The Committee also investigated into the alleged encounter by B.S.F. on August 30,1986 in Dera Baba Nanak Sector of Gurdaspur district. It was the biggest killing of the so-called terrorists in any single action ever since Ribeiro had taken charge of the combined forces of the B.S.F. and C.R.P.F. deployed in Punjab . It was asserted that the 'encounter' took place when ten persons were trying to enter India from Pakistan crossing over the Ravi river in Dera Baba Nanak Sector. The committee found the official version of the police as bare faced lie and came to the conclusion that the ten Sikh youths were already in the custody of the security forces when they were murdered by the B.S.F. Justice Bains said that ninety nine percent of the police encounter cases were bogus. "Having failed to catch the real culprits, the police more often than not, involved persons in encounters". He claims that he knows many cases in which persons after they had written to the senior police officers about extra-judicial execution of their relatives were themselves killed in fake encounters. According to him, 73 persons in police custody had been killed in the district of Amritsar alone within a period of a little more than three months between May 12 and August 22, 1987. According to the newspaper reports, during 1989, a total of 298 Sikhs were reported killed in 178 "armed encounters" as against only 16 members of the police and security forces. In 1990, 346 Sikhs were killed in police custody.

In its so-called counter insurgency policy, the Punjab police adopted the strategy of militants that "kill or be killed' and started targeting the women folk of the rural areas in order to instill fear in the minds of the people. For example, Gurmej Kaur,64, who was the mother of Gurbachan Singh Manochahal, a so-called "A" category terrorist and head of the Bhindranwale Tiger Force was living at the family village house at village Manochahal Kalan of Amritsar district. She had four sons. The police had killed the first two. Like other members of the family, Gurmej Kaur was being constantly harassed for the reason that she was Gurbachan's mother. She had already been detained and tortured a number of times. To avoid further torture, she had been shifting her residence and, at the time of her abduction, was living at the house of Surjit Singh at Katra Sher Singh in Amritsar. On 15th September 1992, DSP Gurmeet Singh Randhawa from the Tarn Taran CIA staff raided the house of Surjit Singh in Amritsar and took Gurmej Kaur to the CIA staff office in Tarn Taran. Apparently, she was detained and tortured there, and later on shifted to other police stations. Gurmej Kaur was seen alive for the last time on 16th March 1993, at Verowal police post by her sisters, in the illegal custody. Later it was found that Gurmej Kaur had been killed after the capture of Gurbachan Singh. Her dead body was thrown into the river near Harike Pattan.Tarlochan Singh Manochahal, his younger son met the SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu few days later to find out what happened to his mother. Ajit Singh Sandhu said: "We intend to liquidate the entire Manochahal family.

Sixty years old Balbir Kaur from Thande village under the post office of Jwala Flour Mill with the Sadar police station of Amritsar district was the mother of Karaj Singh Thande, a known militant. Her husband Makhan Singh was a factory worker and earned Rs. 2000. Apart from thirty years old Karaj Singh, who was killed in a supposedly fake encounter with the police, they had two more sons, thirty-five years old Joginder Singh and thirty-two years old Balwinder Singh. Twenty eight years old Bhajan Kaur was their youngest daughter. In reaction to the army operation against the Golden Temple in June 1984, Karaj Singh had taken to arms and had become a fugitive. Since then the police used to regularly raid the house and harass all the members of the family, particularly mother Balbir Kaur, for information on his whereabouts. Several times, they had been held illegally and tortured. The police also confiscated all the valuable things in the house. They also took away agricultural implements and tube-well motors. The loss of these confiscations is estimated at Rs. 135,000.The police raids did not cease. On 24 February 1987, one ASI from Sadar police station of Amritsar, known as Pappu Bajwa, raided the house along with a large team of constables. The police searched the house and interrogated the family members about Karaj Singh. They could not tell much. ASI Bajwa then started abusing Balbir Kaur and when she protested, he shot her dead in front of all the other members of the family. The killing was later explained away as the result of an encounter.
Ranjit Kaur,40 was married to Amar Singh, an employee of Indian Airlines. She was living in village Gharuan, Patti Daggo, under Kharar police station of Ropar district. She had three grown up children. Her husband lived in New Delhi. On 22nd June 1992, a heavy contingent of Punjab police led by SSP Sanjeev Gupta of Hoshiarpur surrounded her house and conducted a raid and in full public view took Ranjit Kaur into custody. One of Ranjit's daughters insisted on accompanying her to the police station. But the policemen pushed her away from the jeep in which Ranjit Kaur was being taken away. No one has heard of or seen her again. Recently, on the orders of Punjab State Human Rights Commission an F.I.R. regarding the disappearance of Ranjit Kaur has been got registered in P.S. Kharar and investigations are being made into the case afresh.

Gurpreet Kaur of Village Shafipur near Taran Taran in Amritsar district was the wife of a 'branded terrorist' Balwinder Singh. They had married just 15 days before she was picked up by the police and badly tortured during illegal detention for months together. Finding an opportunity, she attempted to escape from police custody, but was again caught and subjected to more severe torture. Traumatized, she attempted to commit suicide in police custody by consuming poison, but was saved and detained in C.I.A.Staff, Taran Taran in 1993. While recovering in the lock-up, she was one day taken away by Inspector Teg Bahadur of Bhikiwind Police Station. From there people saw her being taken away by one DSP and Inspector of C.I.A. Bhikiwind and returned after sometime after liquidating her. Next day, newspapers reported that a hardcore lady militant had jumped into the Sirhind Canal and escaped from police custody. Nobody heard about her after that.

Surinder Kaur of Taran Taran was the Principal of a Model School. Her husband was an ex-serviceman and working in some bank in Amritsar. Both of them along with their child were arrested by the police for harbouring militants in July, 1993. In the C.I.A.Staff, Taran Taran, Surinder Kaur was molested, tortured and ultimately killed by the male police officials. Other inmates of the CIA staff saw the police beating her with Lathis, iron roller and stripping in front of her husband and other relatives. Her husband and four others were shown killed in an encounter that very night. Her small child was made an orphan within a day. Today, he is living in a pitiable condition with no source of livelihood. No official version about the whereabouts of Surinder Kaur has come till date.

Harjit Kaur, wife of another militant Anar Singh Para was picked up by Taran Taran Police and kept in illegal detention in CIA staff, Taran Taran in 1993. Later on she was not seen by anybody, nor there is any information about her whereabouts. Her only misfortune was that she was the wife of a militant and this was sufficient charge, those days, to be killed without any trial.

Manjit Kaur of village Sabhranwan in Taran Taran district and his husband Joginder Singh Judge was arrested by the police on the charge of supporting militants and subjected to inhuman torture for many months before being released. They had to pay few lacs of rupees for securing their liberty.

Sarabjit Kaur(13) and Salwinder Kaur(14) of village Bham, district Batala (Gurdaspur) had gone to fetch clay to a nearby canal in the village. They were kidnapped by SPO Roshan Lal and Const. Parshottam Dev on 11th June, 1989 and 'disappeared' thereafter. Both girls were reportedly raped and then killed by two police officers. The bodies of the two were found from a drain near the village on 16th June, 1989. The Police alleged they committed suicide. The then Governor of Punjab had ordered the dismissal and prosecution of two police officers but no formal F.I.R. was lodged nor any trial was held due to 'lack of evidence'.

The police picked up from Amritsar, two women namely Gurmeet Kaur and Gurdev Kaur, both working in Khalsa College. Their only offence was that husband of Gurdev Kaur and brother in law of Gurmeet Kaur were 'branded terrorists'. Both of them were taken to Interrogation Centre in Batala and subjected to inhuman torture by SSP Gobind Ram of Batala. While Gurdev Kaur was able to bear the torture, Gurmeet Kaur succumbed to her injuries and was declared killed by the militants.

Rajinder Kaur of Chamkaur Sahib in Ropar district was picked up by a police party on November 13, 1993 and took her to the banks of the Sirhind Canal. The police wanted information on the whereabouts of her militant husband. She was mercilessly beaten and threatened to be thrown into the canal if she did not tell where her husband was. After getting the required information they tied her in a gunny bag and put her into the water several times but then relented and brought her to the police station. If Rajinder Kaur did not drown it is not the fault of the police.

A Sikh couple, Bhai Kanwar Singh Dhami and his wife Kulbir Kaur who claimed themselves to be ideologues of Khalistan were picked up in May 1993 and were kept in illegal detention till March 29, 1994 along with their five year old son, Randhir Singh. During their illegal detention in Taran Taran, Bhikhiwind(Amritsar) and Ropar C.I.A. Staff, they saw numerous people being tortured and killed in cold blood. After their release from jail, they made spine-chilling revelations in the form of a book, " Tales of State Repression". A relevant abstract is reproduced hereunder:

".....S.P(Detective) was reported as 'admitted in the hospital for having received injuries in the so-called encounter' in which a hardcore militant of Khalistan Liberation Force was shown killed near Chamkaur Sahib in Ropar. He was sitting before us heavily drunk. When we asked him that in newspapers you have been shown admitted in the hospital, but you are well and present here, he said that "today it's our rule. The doctors, judges and jailors all go by our order. See, the newspapers, have shown it as an encounter and I have even received the award money of Rs.20 lakh. But you know, everybody knows how militants are killed in 'encounter', still nobody could dare speak against us."

It was a period of extreme repression, with nobody even allowed to utter the customary slogan, "Whaeguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh." . A famous poet rightly described the state of mind of the people in his words:

Manzar the kayamat ke kya pichhle zamanon mein,
Sar bikte hue dekhe phoolon ki dukanon mein.
(It was a period of horrific scenes, when heads were sold in the market)

Nobody was allowed to perform the last rites of the persons killed in the so-called encounters. Gurdwaras holding such ceremonies were surrounded by security forces and whosoever participated in the Bhog(last rites) was picked up and badly tortured. Many old and young people who simply participated in those functions were charged under TADA for supporting militants or even liquidated. Many senior Akali leaders or human rights activists like Simranjit Singh Mann, Justice Ajit Singh Bains and others were arrested while proceeding to attend the Bhog of so-called militants, who were respected by the people as martyr.

What happened in Punjab was the result of a policy of complete cynicism, callousness and allowing the police to let loose a reign of oppression as stated above. It would seem that in frustration even an editor of The Tribune, who was known for its anti-human rights stance those days, wrote in its editorial:

"They (police) act as if they owe no obligations to the people, they are not answerable to anyone and they are above the law. So, they use the innocent persons as shields to attack terrorists and post facto describe the dead persons as militants killed in encounter; they detain academics without warrants, handcuff former judges; and horror of horrors, force brilliant students to appear in technical college entrance examinations as proxies to the wards of senior police officers. All in the name of fighting the nations battle against militancy.... Punjab is swamped by uniformed forces-army, 450 companies of paramilitary forces, 60,000 policemen, 12,000 special officers, 20,000 home guards-contributing to the psyche of societal insecurity, testifying to the awesome force of the invisible militant to destroy you and the arrogant helplessness of the visible police force to protect your life and limbs... what sustains militancy today is not so much Pakistan-inspired violence or the separatist cause as the total absence of governmental interest in Punjab and the unchecked power of the police vis-a-vis common people."

In another editorial, the same newspaper wrote:
"Policemen in Punjab have evolved their own version of the American saying: "Give the dog a bad name and hang him." Shoot anyone you like and then call him a terrorist. Such is their arrogant disregard for law and citizen's rights that policemen do not even feel the need to slap the terrorist label on persons they kill. On Sunday a raiding party of policemen from Punjab chased a Maruti car right upto Dhulkot in Amabala district and killed two young men and a five year old child and true, to style, after killing them the policemen danced gleefully, claiming that they had killed a notorious terrorist "responsible for 500 killings and carrying a reward of Rs. 10 lakh on his head." If promotion of terrorism needed any strong spurs, the Punjab policemen's action in Ambala could be the ideal answer to the separatists' prayers. But such savagery is no isolated incident. On the other day, a few personnel of the CRPF allegedly raped the wife of a gardener in Mohali and when the man retaliated in shock and outrage, he was promptly branded a terrorist and a harbour of criminals. Weeks earlier, at Behla village in Amritsar district, the security forces used innocent villagers as shields to fight hiding militants and, at the end of the encounter, the killed villagers were promptly branded as terrorists. There is a perverse police law in operation here; if you die of police bullets you are a terrorist; if you are shot by others, you are a terrorist victim to enable the police to shoot somebody else and claim a reward for having solved your murder. Between the militants and the police, the right to life of a citizen in Punjab seems to have been suspended indefinitely."

The Pioneer in March 1992 in its editorial wrote:
"Disappearances are routine, bodies of those killed by the police are rarely handed over to their families, postmortems are faked, fraudulent, rewards are claimed.... The police have taken to kidnapping the relatives of suspected militants and even wiping out their families. Very few police vehicles bear number plates, and heavily armed policemen often move about in plain clothes. The dividing line between the policeman and the outlaw has been all but obliterated as both go about indulging in mindless violence..... Politicians have abdicated, the civic administration exists only in name, and the judicial system is completely stalled. In the courts, the processes are slow, the loss archaic and witnesses and judges unwilling to participate. The result is that, despite being armed with draconian laws like TADA, there has been a very poor rate of convictions."

In a dispatch published in a National daily in July, 1991, it was mentioned that innocent Sikh youth were humiliated and tortured daily by the Punjab police. " How many bullets will you take to die ?" the jeering police constable had asked two teenagers while blindfolding them. "There is no escape for both of you now." None other than Ajit Singh Sandhu led the police party, according to this dispatch. These two teenagers Avtar and Balwinder were tortured and beaten a number of times in CIA Staff, Taran Taran. Avtar cannot forget the torture his mother was subjected to at the police station on May 29,1991. "They had just finished beating me after stripping me when they brought in my mother and began beating her too." According to Avtar, the SSP then ordered that his mother too should be stripped. " I looked at the SSP in horror as other policemen leered. It was sickening and I could have murdered him."

In its report on Punjab released by Amnesty International in 1993, the International pressure was built by highlighting the police atrocities. It wrote:
"Thousands of people have been arrested by police and security forces in Punjab since 1983, when armed Sikh opposition groups emerged demanding an independent Sikh State (Khalistan). People have often been arrested on mere suspicion that they are linked to armed Sikh groups or have information about them. Torture during illegal custody is widespread. Parents, brothers or sisters of suspects have also been arbitrarily detained and tortured in order to extract information about their relatives' whereabouts or activities. Those tortured include young people and the elderly. Women and girls in Punjab have also been tortured. The problem became so acute that in 1989 the Governor of Punjab instructed the police not to bring any woman to a police station for questioning; they were only to interrogate women in front of village elders or similar representatives of the community."

The former Director-General of Punjab police, K.S.Dhillon wrote in his paper, " A decade of Militancy and Violence":
"State terror, allegedly practiced by the Indian security forces, has come in for a lot of adverse comment, not only by foreign human rights groups, but even by Indian media, judiciary and intelligentsia. State terror is actually far more sinister and deadly in the toll it takes of the life and property of mostly innocent citizens and in the damage it causes to social harmony and equilibrium. It amounts to an abuse of legitimate state power vested in it for national defence and public security. Terrorists commit small acts of public terror while concealing their identity. The State, on the other hand, commits acts of secret terror directed against its own detractors or saboteurs."

The use of torture in Punjab has been officially confirmed. A judicial investigation was conducted in February 1989 by Justice S.S.Sodhi, in Amritsar jail. He found that many detainees had been tortured by police when kept in illegal detention preceding formal arrest. Even when medical reports have confirmed use of torture there has often been no further action. Surinder Singh was detained by the police on November 30, 1990 and subjected to torture. He was released on 22 December, 1990 after a habeas corpus petition was filed in the High Court by his father. After his release Surinder Singh disclosed that he had been illegally detained, no case had been registered against him and that his arrest had not been entered in the daily diary register. He disclosed to the court that he had been tortured and it ordered that he be medically examined. The medical reports stated that Surinder Singh was unable to walk and described 18 scars, abrasions and bruises on his body. However, the High Court did not recommend any further investigation into the allegations of torture.

KPS Gill sought to derive propaganda mileage by stage managing public surrender of known militants. On March 29,1994 he invited the journalists to witness what was supposed to be a public surrender by the founder of the Akal Federation, Bhai Kanwar Singh Dhami. But Dhami stood up and said, "I will prefer to be cut into pieces than surrender to the terrorist police chief." He told the press that he had been witness to the torture and extra-judicial killing of atleast 15 persons who were his prison mates.

On many occasions Punjab police was castigated by the Supreme Court for their outrageous behavior that bordered on gross criminality. But KPS Gill remained incontrite. He rode rough shod over the rule of law with the full support of Chief Minister Beant Singh who publicly announced that each time his policemen were to be committed for trial, they would be defended in courts at the government's expense. He said that he would engage the best lawyers in the country to defend the police. He held in equal contempt, country's constitution. The Beant-Gill duo engineered the genocide of the Sikhs on an unprecedented scale and unabashedly subverted all the democratic institutions. Under the patronage of bosses from Delhi, they enjoyed the prerogative to pick any Sikh from any part of the country and shoot him much in the manner game birds are shot. Due to their illegal policies, the Sikhs in the State have had to bear with a tyrannical and hypocritical regime fiddled with criminality, corruption and moral perversions. As far as Punjab police were concerned, inter state borders, were non-existent. Police on the payroll of the Punjab administration had the inalienable right to travel 1,500 miles to West Bengal to liquidate suspected militants. A glaring instance of the extra-territorial activities of the Punjab police popularly known as Tiljala encounter, came to light when a contingent of the Punjab police, without informing the West Bengal government, barged into a flat in a Calcutta suburb and gunned down in cold blood a young couple, Ranjit Singh alias Lachmi Singh and his wife Rani alias Sakina Begum, suspected of committing acts of violence in Punjab in the wee hours of May 17,1993. Their dead bodies were whisked away without the knowledge of the West Bengal government and dumped at a place, the identity of which was never disclosed. The Supreme Court of India ordered a CBI probe which held it to be a cold blooded murder. The Supreme Court while ordering the prosecution of one Superintendent of Police and five of his accomplices of Punjab police lamented that " If the facts are ultimately established, it would reveal that human life has no value to the men in Uniform. But awfully, the apex court never hauled up the Punjab administration under whose directions the killings were undertaken. Recently, the said S.P. and five policemen of Punjab police were held guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment by a Calcutta Sessions Court.

When the relatives of victims started approaching the High Court and Supreme Court for justice through human rights activists and lawyers and the policemen indicted for their extra-judicial killings, the Punjab police started targeting human rights activists. Many human rights activists and lawyers fighting police atrocities had to encounter numerous hazards and hardships and faced the wrath of the police as they were looked upon as subversive. First came the turn of Ajit Singh Bains, retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and Chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organization. His illegal arrest in April 1992 was not acknowledged for two days. Bains was manhandled, abused and publicly exhibited in handcuffs. Later, his arrest was formalised under TADA. The accusation was that Bains had taken part in a secret meeting of militant leaders, held at Anandpur on March 18, where they hatched a conspiracy to carry out "terrorist actions". An inquiry later ordered by the High Court of Punjab established that Ajit Singh Bains' name did not figure in the original First Information Report about the "illegal meeting". However, the idea of arresting Bains was not to secure his conviction under the law, but to paralyse PHRO, and to demoralise other human rights groups with the example. Chief Minister Beant Singh told the State Legislative Assembly on April 6 that his government would not release Bains because his organisation was engaged "in defending terrorists". He remained in jail for more than three months, only to be released without trial. Punjab government kept up the pressure on the PHRO by arresting Malwinder Singh Malli, General Secretary of the organisation, in August 1992. Some of the other prominent activists like Major-General Narinder Singh, Col. Partap Singh, had to suffer periodic arrests and detention for monitoring the cases of police highhandedness in the State. The police in fake encounter killed Atamjit Singh Mavi the son of Dr.Gurbachan Singh Mavi, a human rights activist on February 6, 1991. Avtar Singh Mander, a young journalist of a Punjabi daily,"Ajit" was abducted from his house in Jalandhar by a police party on September 23, 1992 and probably done to death. His whereabouts are still not known. Navkiran Singh, a leading lawyer and a known human rights activist, having the credit of getting more than a dozen police officers behind bars for their illegal actions was shot at in district courts,Chandigarh when he tried to prevent the police from re-arresting a sikh boy after his acquittal by the Sessions Judge Chandigarh in a TADA case. Fortunately for him, the policeman missed the shot and he had a narrow escape. But he was detained and badly beaten by the police. The police eliminated many other lawyers and human rights activists because they defended their clients in the court of law against the Punjab police. The police kidnapped Ranbir Singh Mansahia of Bhatinda on September 12, 1991. Jagwinder Singh alias Happy, a practising advocate of Kapurthala was also kidnapped by a party of Punjab police on September 25, 1992 from his house. The Punjab police then kidnapped Sukhwinder Singh Bhatti, another Advocate of Sangrur on May 12, 1994. All of them simply vanished in the air without any trace thereafter. Kulwant Singh Saini, a young advocate of Ropar, his wife and two years old child were detained in the Ropar Police Station on January 25, 1993 when he had gone to secure the release of a lady client. All the three were later tortured to death. According to eyewitnesses, Kulwant Singh was detained in CIA Staff, Ropar and badly tortured there by Head Constable Prithi Pal Singh and other police officials. He was tied upside down with an old tree in the CIA staff, and brutally tortured. He succumbed to injuries then and there. Later on his wife and a two years old child were similarly done to death only to destroy the evidence. Jaswant Singh Khalra, a well known human rights activist and the General Secretary of human rights wing of Shiromani Akali Dal when started investigating into the matter of "forced disappearances" of Sikh youth and the disposing of their dead bodies in a clandestine manner to the notice of the Supreme Court, the wrath of Punjab police fell on him and he too was made to "disappear". Would anybody ask the persons who appreciate the police for eliminating people who had taken to gun, that all the above lawyers and human rights activists were without any arms or suspicion of being terrorists, then why were they killed? Should those policemen who killed these peace loving and law abiding people be given amnesty from punishment?

Khalra was investigating into the report on the cremation of 25,000 unidentified bodies all over Punjab. He had collected clear evidences that in the districts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur alone, there were as many as 3000 such cases of youngmen, who were cremated as 'unidentified terrorists' without any information to their families. He was in the process of unearthing more facts and figures and making similar revelations regarding other districts as well. He had also collected evidence that around 2000 policemen in Punjab had been killed by the police itself for not co-operating in counter-terror operations. He had found that the police had burnt more than 1400 bodies in the cremation grounds of Amritsar, Patti and Taran Taran in only 1992 by stating that they were unclaimed or unidentified. He also disclosed in a press release that during the period Ist June, 1984 to the end of 1994 about 2000 bodies had been cremated as unclaimed in the cremation ground near Durgiana Mandir in Amritsar alone. He had for some time been receiving direct and indirect threats from the police officials of Amritsar district, particularly from Tarn Taran's Senior Superintendent of Police Ajit Singh Sandhu. The later had warned that unless he stopped his involvement in the matter, he would also become an unidentified body. But he refused to take to flight, and stuck with his human rights work in his native region. On the morning of September 6, 1995, the armed commandos of Punjab police kidnapped Khalra from outside his house in Amritsar. A bench of the Supreme Court under Justice Kuldip Singh treated a telegram about the abduction, which it received from Gurcharan Singh Tohra, as a petition for the writ of habeas corpus and issued notice to the Punjab authorities. The S. P. Sukhdev Singh Chhina of Amritsar city filed affidavits to claim that Khalra was not wanted in connection with any case and that the police had not arrested him. Other officials also filed affidavits to maintain that the Punjab authorities were making all efforts to trace Khalra, contending at the same time that he might have become a victim of inter gang rivalries. SSP Sandhu of Tarn Taran also filed a statement to deny that he had ever threatened Khalra. Meanwhile, another bench of the Supreme Court under Justice Kuldip Singh was proceedings with the matter relating to Jaswant Singh Khalra's abduction. On 15 November 95, Punjab's Advocate-General M. L. Sareen suggested that the court should hand over the investigation of Khalra's abduction and disappearance to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Accordingly, the court directed the CBI to appoint an investigation team under a responsible officer. On 30 July 1996, the CBI submitted its report on Khalra's abduction and disappearance, holding nine officers of the Punjab police under SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu responsible. At the CBI's request the court directed their prosecution on charges of conspiracy and "kidnapping with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person". The court also directed the Chief Secretary of Punjab to sanction their prosecution within three weeks of the order. The Sanction Order dated 19 August 1996 elucidated the CBI's findings that established the criminal conspiracy to abduct Jaswant Singh Khalra. The Sanction Order pointed out that on 24 October 1995, eighteen days after his abduction, Khalra was found illegally detained at Kang Police Station, along with another person namely Kikkar Singh who was also detained there illegally. The Sanction order mentioned that Kikkar Singh witnessed the injuries on Khalra's body, the evidence of his custodial torture. It went on to say that Kikkar Singh helped Khalra to eat before he was taken away from the Kang police station, never to be seen again. Kikkar Singh's illegal detention from 14 October to 11 November 1995, as elucidated in the Governor's Sanction Order, was independently corroborated by an inquiry conducted by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Chandigarh, which the High Court of Punjab and Haryana relied on to grant him monetary compensation. The evidence on record in the Governor's Order of Sanction confirmed serious offences under sections 302, 364, 346, 330, 331 and 120 of IPC. However, the offenders were arrested only under section 365 of IPC which is "kidnapping with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person", a woefully insufficient charge in the face of evidence which proved kidnapping with the intent to murder, illegal confinement, custodial torture and custodial murder. Subsequently, former Special Police Officer Kuldip Singh, who was attached to the Kang police station, told the CBI that Khalra was tortured and then shot dead in the night of 24 October 1995. His dead body was quartered and thrown in river Sutlej near Hari Ke Pattan. The court, which presumed Khalra to be still alive, when it ordered the prosecution of the officials on 30 July, knew none of these facts. On 7 August 1996, the court also directed the Punjab government to pay ten lakh rupees as interim compensation to Mrs. Khalra. The court's order said: "The fact remains that the abductors are keeping Khalra away from his family since 6 September 1995. Kidnapping of a person whose family is totally in dark about his whereabouts - even about the fact whether he is alive or dead - is the worst crime against humanity. In the facts and circumstances of this, we direct the Punjab government through the Chief Secretary, Punjab to pay a sum of Rs. 10 lacs as interim compensation to Mrs. Paramjit Kaur, wife of Mr. Jaswant Singh Khalra. In case, the police officers are convicted the State of Punjab can recover the amount from the police officers..." The court had awarded interim compensation for the crime of disappearance, which it described as the worst crime against humanity. The court also took note of the allegations regarding police abductions, disappearances and illegal cremations, which Jaswant Singh Khalra had made in a press release dated 16 January 1995. In the 15 November 95 order instituting these inquiries, Justice Kuldip Singh observed: "In case it is found that the facts stated in the Press Note are correct - even partially - it would be a gory-tale of human rights violations. It is horrifying to visualize those dead bodies of larger number of persons - allegedly thousands - could be cremated by the police unceremoniously with a label "unidentified". Our faith in democracy and rule of law assures us that nothing of the type can ever happen in this country but the allegations in the Press Note - horrendous as they are - need thorough investigation. We, therefore, direct the Director, Central Bureau of Investigation to appoint a high powered team to investigate into the facts contained in the press note dated January 16, 1995. We direct all the concerned authorities of the State of Punjab including the DGP to render all assistance to the CBI in the investigation... The CBI shall complete the investigation regarding kidnapping of Khalra within three months... So far as the second investigation is concerned we do not fix any time limit but direct the CBI to file interim reports... after every three months." On 22 July 96, the CBI submitted an interim report that disclosed 984 illegal cremations at Tarn Taran. The CBI also asked the court to order registration of three separate criminal cases against the police officials in respect of three deaths in suspicious circumstances. The court ordered the CBI to register the cases. It also directed the investigative agency to issue a general notice to the public at large to assist in the inquiry. The court's order dated 22 July 96 said:

"Since large number of dead bodies have been allegedly disposed of by the police it may be necessary to seek assistance from the public at large. We direct the CBI in the course of enquiry to issue a general direction to the public at large that if any person/authority/government office has any information/material which may be of any assistance to the CBI in the enquiry in this matter, the same shall be placed before the CBI. We direct Mr. P. S. Sandhu, DIG (Border) to hand over the entire relevant records to the CBI immediately."

The Government boasted of restoring peace in Punjab. But there can be no getting away from the fact that only peace of the grave has been imposed on the State. Tacitup said of the Roman conquests: They make a desert and call it peace." Security forces in Punjab committed mass incarceration and 'disappearances' and called it normalcy. There is a deep undercurrent of resentment and anguish against the kind of peace that has been ushered in. In this part of the country, there are thousands of grief-stricken parents whose young sons were dragged away by the police, never to be heard of thereafter. Mothers, sisters and wives of youngmen either whisked away or killed in cold blood, might have dried their eyes but they have not yet reconciled to the meticulously executed liquidation, under official patronage, of their dear ones.

Those who believe that this kind of peace can last are taking a myopic view. In a longer perspective, the problem may aggravate on a more colossal scale and may assume more disastrous form. It would be a folly to believe that the Sikhs can be put down by brute force.

Tumne Jisko Katl Karke Chheen Lee Thi Jaydad
Zalimon Us Shaksh Kke Bacchhe Sayaane Ho Gaye !

(Beware, the children of those persons have grown young,
whose property you had seized after killing them)

 

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