During the militancy period in 1992, where the police had picked up the youth from their homes and killed them in fake police encounters, the police officers did not spare even their own police personnel. In a case in Tarn Taran, the then SHO of the city police station, led by Gurbachan Singh alias Manochal, believed to be the SHO of the time, picked up a constable and an SPO of the Punjab Police from their homes and killed them in a police encounter during the recovery of weapons and cremated their bodies, declaring them unidentified. In this case, after 32 years, the CBI special court Rakesh Kumar Gupta has convicted former SHO Gurbachan Singh, Sub Inspector Resham Singh and Sub Inspector Hans Raj on the charge of killing Constable Jagdeep Singh Makhan and SPO Gurnam Singh Pali. Whereas in this case, the third named ASI Arjan Singh has died during the hearing of the case. In this case, Advocate Anmol Narang appeared for the CBI and while Advocate Sarabjit Singh Verka, Advocate Jagjit Singh Bajwa and Pushpinder Singh Natt represented the victim’s family. Advocate Verka said that on 18 November 1992, the then SHO of the city police station, Gurbachan Singh and the police party forcibly took away Constable Jagdeep Singh Makhan from his in-laws’ house in his village Jaura. During the shots fired when he did not open the door, Jagdeep Singh’s mother-in-law Savinder Kaur, who was an employee of the Shiromani Committee, died due to bullet injuries. The police had released him after saying that Savinder Kaur had been killed by unknown militants. Apart from this, SPO Gurnam Singh Pali, a resident of Noordi Bazar in Tarn Taran, was also picked up from his house by a police party led by Gurbachan Singh on 21 November 1992. On 30 November 1992, SPO Gurnam Singh Pali was arrested in a 108/92 case registered by the police of the city police station. The police had said that SPO Gurnam Singh had admitted that he had hidden weapons in the fields near village Behla, which the police had taken him to recover, when two unknown militants opened fire on the police. The FIR had said that during the retaliatory firing by the police due to darkness and fog, SPO Gurnam Singh Pali was killed and during this an unidentified militant was also killed and the case was closed by accusing him of attacking the police in case number 130/92 at the City police station. The unidentified militant who was killed was later identified as Constable Jagdeep Singh Makhan. The police did not give any information about the slain police constable and SPO to their families and both of them were declared unclaimed and cremated.
After Jaswant Singh Khalra, who was a human rights activist, lost his life in the case of unidentified bodies, his wife Paramjit Kaur Khalra took the matter of unclaimed bodies to the Supreme Court, and a CBI investigation was ordered in this case. In this case, the statements of Jagdeep Singh’s father Pritam Singh were recorded by the CBI, while Gurnam Singh Pali SPO. After recording the statement of his mother Kartar Kaur, the CBI on 27 February 1997 named a total of 9 police personnel including former SHO Gurbachan Singh Manochal, Sub Inspector Resham Singh, Sub Inspector Hans Raj and ASI Arjan Singh in this case on charges of kidnapping, illegal detention and killing. The court will now pronounce the sentence on the police personnel. It is worth mentioning that former SHO Gurbachan Singh is serving a life sentence for killing Gulshan Kumar, a boy from a poor Hindu family of Tarn Taran, and three other youths in a fake police encounter.
