Jalandhar, Punjab (July 16, 2013): The recent disclosures made by Punjab cop Sub-Inspector Surjit Singh has once again brought the issue of fake encounters and secret cremations in focus. Besides families of those murdered by SI Surjit Singh in fake encounters, family members of other persons killed by Punjab police in fake encounters are also coming out to narrate their stories and to seek justice for their kins killed by the police.
On July 14, 2013 Khalra Mission Organization (KMO) and Punjab Human Rights Organizations (PHRO) presented some of the victim families before the media at Press club Jalandhar, where the family members of those killed by Punjab police in fake encounters in 1990s narrated their tales. In most of these cases the victims were picked up from houses and then shown killed in fake encounters and then cremating without informing the family members.
Kabal Singh of village Jodhpur in district Tarn Taran revealed that first his brother Avtar Singh and then his son Devinder Singh were killed in a similar way.
“Devinder was picked up from our home at around 11 am on May 30, 1991 and at around 5 pm the same day he was killed along with four other boys,” Kabal Singh reportedly said.
According to a news reported by Times of India (TOI): “Karamjeet Kaur of village Mehdipur near Patti in district Tarn Taran said that her father Balwant Singh and latter’s two brother Kulwant Singh and Sukhwant Singh were killed in 1991-92 after being rounded up by the police”.
“We could never know what exactly happened to them and we never got their bodies,” she said. “The only thing we could confirm was that they were killed after being detained in police custody,” she reportedly said.
Surjit Kaur of Sur Singh village in Tarn Taran, broke down while narrating the event of elimination of her son Sukhdev Singh. “I brought him up after his father died when he was just six months old and then I could not trace him after he was picked up by police in the early nineties,” she Surjit Kaur added.