In November 89, Senior Superintendent of Police, Sanjiv Gupta, instructed the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Vijay Pal Sharma. to show Harpal Singh the report of an armed encounter that had supposedly taken place between the security forces and Sikh militants in the outskirts of Amritsar leading to death of two Sikh militants in the night of May 25/2 6. Harpal Singh saw the report but none of the two photos of the killed attached to the report was of his son.
On 28 December 1989 two members of the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, Nitya Ramakrishnan and R.N. Kumar, met the Senior Superintendent of Police, Amritsar and requested him to ascertain Gurmej Singh’s whereabouts forthwith. The Superintendent told them that his difficulty in formally instituting an inquiry was that no one who may have seen Gurdev Singh take Gurmej Singh away was willing to state this to him, The members of the Committee told him that there were witnesses to the factum of Gurdev Singh driving him away, and that Mrs. Tejinder Kaur, mother of Gurmej Singh had met him on 25 May 1989 and had told him unequivocally that she had seen Inspector Gurdev Singh take him along in his official jeep, and that she had said so to him in front of nearly ten witnesses. The members of the Committee then asked him to record her statement. The said members of the Committee also met the Governor, Punjab on 30 December 1989 and apprised him of the case. The same day the Superintendent of police, Amnitsar, recorded the statement of Gurmej Singh’s mother reiterating the case of his abduction by Inspector Gurdey Singh who has since been promoted to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police.
CASE 3
Shamsher Singh is a retired soldier of 70 who lives with his wife Inderjit Kaur in village Rampur mehrab, Boodh garhbalan, PO Morinda, District Ropar. They had three sons: Rajinder Pal Singh, the youngest who has been killed; Khushwinder Singh, who is in the illegal custody of the CIA staff, Patiala and Gurmej Singh the eldest who has gone away from home following his wife’s death after the abortion she suffered under police torture.
Sometime after Operation Blue star he and his wife do not remember the date’s police came to their house to ask for Rajinder Pal Singh, their youngest son. Rajinder Pal Singh was at home and the police took him away. The old couples do not know the identities of the policemen. But policemen kept coming and picking him up for interrogation. After some time Rajinder Pal Singh went away from the house.
Police did not cease to harass other members of the family to put pressure on Rajinder Pal Singh to surrender. Once police came to the house when Gurmej Singh and his wife, Jasbir Kaur, were alone in the house. Gurmej Singh’s wife was pregnant. Rajinder Pal Singh Sodha, the Station House Officer of Morinda police station, was in the lead. Policemen beat up both Gurmej Singh and his wife and threatened to kill them if they did not reveal the whereabouts of Rajinder Pal Singh. Some policemen even fired in the air to scare them. After some time the policemen went away. Jasbir Kaur felt a severe pain in her abdomen and was taken to a hospital in Chamkaur Sahib. The doctors said that she had to be operated on since the child in her womb had died. She was taken to the PGI in Chandigarh where she too died. Her husband was taken into custody the same night, minutes after he had returned home after cremating Jasbir Kaur. When he was released after some days he ‘went away from the house and never came back.
On 21 May 1985 a Punjabi newspaper, Ajit, published a report of Rajinder Pal Singh’s arrest. Some days later a Sub Divisional Magistrate came to the house to inform Shamsher Singh that his son had been killed in an inter gang fight. The Sub Divisional Magistrate asked him to sign on some papers which he did without reading them.
Khushwinder Singh, who remained with them, had already been involved in some cases during the days when the police used to harass the family to find out the whereabouts of Rajinder Pal Singh. On 26 January 1989, the Republic day of India, police took him again into custody. For one month nothing was heard of him. After that he was produced before a magistrate and sent to Ludhiana Jail. He was released on bail in April 1989. Khushwinder Singh had to attend the trial before a court in Ludhiana on 21 July 1989. In the evening of July 20th he went to the house of a relative, Nettar Singh in Madanpur, near Mohali, accompanied by Shamsher Singh, his father. They stayed in the house of the relative overnight. On the 21st morning they went to the bus stand to take a bus to Chandigarh where Khushwinder was to change his bus to go to Ludhiana. While they were waiting for a bus to arrive at the Madanpur bus stand, two vehicles without number plates, one Maruti van and one jeep, drove up to them. Some armed men in plain clothes led by a person who Shamsher Singh later recognized to be Inspector Sujit Singh Grewal of CIA staff, Patiala caught hold of Khushwinder Singh and forced him to get into the jeep and drove away with him.
Towards the end of August 89, Shamsher Singh and his wife Inderjit Singh learnt that their son was in the custody of the CIA staff, Patiala. One Sher Singh who also seen arrested on the same day came to their house and told them that both of them were in the CIA interrogation center at Patiala till 23 August. On learning this from Sher Singh, Shamsher Singh went to the CIA staff office in Patiala in the company of Madho Singh, erstwhile member of the Punjab Assembly from Ropar. There he met Surjit Singh Grewal and recognized him as the person who had abducted his son. But the Inspector denied that he had ever taken Khushwinder Singh into custody.
On 26 October 89 Khushwinder Singh was seen in police custody in Chandigarh by Paramjit Kaur, wife of Netter Singh, the relative in whose house he had spent the night before his abduction. Paramjit Kaur had gone to the hospital in Sector 16 around 9 am and was returning home after getting a medical checkup. She saw little ahead of her a person in handcuffs who was being led away from the hospital by seven or eight policemen into a waiting van. The person from behind resembled Khushwinder Singh. She then called out his name. Immediately the person turned to look at her and she recognized him to be Khushwinder Singh. Policemen escorting him became apprehensive and asked him to move on, but he still kept turning in her direction.
CASE 4
Kulwinder Singh, alias Kid, aged 20 years, is the only child of Tarlochan Singh Sidhu, principle of the Khalsa Senior Secondary School, Kharar, district Ropar. Kulwinder Singh was suspected of being associated with the All India Sikh Students Federation, by the police authorities. He was arrested in September 1986 and was lodged in the maximum security prison of Nabha for two years. He was released from jail on 27 October 88.
From the day of his release personnel of Punjab police from different districts started raiding the house of Tarlochan Singh Sidhu, and taking Kulwinder Singh and other members of the family into illegal custody, lasting several days, for interrogation without disclosing specific charges.
On4 January 1989, Mr. Sidhu met the Senior Superintendent of Police, Ropar, to ask him why the police was still harassing Kulwinder Singh and his family. The Senior Superintendent of Police assured him that Kulwinder Singh was not wanted in any criminal case and that there would be no further harassment. Kulwinder Singh was married on 12 February 1989, and started living separately with his wife in house No. 1752, Mohali district Ropar.
On 22 July 1989 around 11 am a large number of policemen, many in plainclothes, laid siege to the house (No 1752, Phase 5 of Mohali). A sympathetic neighbor who was familiar with the circumstances of Kulwinder Singh and fearing that the police might whisk him away once again went to Tarlochan Singh Sidhu at his school and informed him about it. Tarlochan Singh immediately contacted his friends. Hakikat Singh (son of Nikka Singh, resident of village Deh Kala, Kharar), Inderjit Singh Waraich (son of Sohan Singh, resident of House no, 138, Phase I of Mohali) Ajmer Singh (son of Ganda Singh, resident of village Kumbra, Kharar) Shamsher Singh (son of Mansha Singh, resident of Desu Majra, Kharar) and Harpreet Singh (son of Gurcharan Singh, resident of village Bhago Majra, Baironpur, Kharar) accompanied Tarlochan Singh Sidhu to his son’s house in Phase 5 of Mohali.
As they were walking towards the house it was around 3 p.m. they saw Kulwinder Singh and another Sikh youth walking down the lane in the opposite direction. When they were near the house (No 1752) nine to ten policemen suddenly pounced on them and arrested Kulwinder Singh. His companion tried to escape and was fired upon. He was seen falling down in front of the house by the aforementioned persons. The policemen dragged his injured body to an unnumbered jeep which was parked outside the house Kulwinder Singh, who had been arrested, was immediately blindfolded, his hands and feet were tied and was dragged into the jeep. The police action was led by Amarjit Singh, Assistant Sub Inspector, CIA staff, Patiala. The name of the person who had been shot was subsequently ascertained to be Palwinder Singh, alias Pola, resident of Thade, Sadar police station, Phagwara. Tarlochan Singh Sidhu immediately sent telegrams to the Governor of Punjab, the Director General of Punjab police and Senior Superintendent of Ropar police, informing them about the incident and requesting them to prevent their murder in a faked encounter.
On the morning of 24 July 89 Tarlochan Singh learnt that the police had staged an encounter in the area of police station Sohana, not far from Kharar, the previous night in the course of which two terrorists were claimed to have been killed. Suspecting that the killed youth might have been Kulwinder Singh and his injured companion, Trilochan Singh addressed a telegraphic petition to the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court requesting him to order that the bodies not be cremated until they had been identified. The High Court did not admit the petition. The same evening Justice A.S. Bains, a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and Chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organization, and Mr. Inderjeet Singh Jaijee, convener of the Movement Against State Repression, met the Deputy Commissioner of Ropar and requested him to let Mr. Trilochan Singh Sidhu take a look at the bodies after their post mortem, before they were cremated. The Deputy Commissioner telephoned the Deputy Superintendent of Police in the presence of Mr. Bains and Mr. Jaijee and conveyed their request to him. He agreed and asked them to come over to the Civil Hospital, Ropar. He however had the bodies removed from the hospital before they could reach there. The Police cremated the bodies as being unclaimed.
On 25 July Tarlochan Singh Sidhu moved an application in the Court of D.K. Monga, Sub Divisional Judicial Magistrate, Kharar, praying for the direction to Ropar police to produce in his court the photographs, clothes and other articles recovered from the bodies of the two men who the police claimed had been killed in the encounter of the 23rd night. The magistrate merely issued the notice to the police to file their answer. The affidavit filed by the Station House Officer of the police station Mohali on 27 July 1989 stated that on 22 July 89. Assistant Sub Inspector Amarjit Singh of the CIA staff, Patiala along with other policemen raided the house (No 1752, Phase 5 of Mohali) and that during the raid alleged terrorists Palvinder Singh Pola and Kulwinder Singh opened fire on them. The police returned fire killing Palvinder Singh. Kulwinder Singh the reply said had managed to escape.
Tarlochan Singh Sidhu was now convinced that his son had been killed. He however was wrong.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 8, 1990
