Ex-SSP among five Punjab cops get life term for staged killings

A CBI court sentenced five retired Punjab Police officers, including an SSP and a DSP, to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 3.50 lakh each in a 32-year-old case involving the fake encounters of seven youths from Tarn Taran in 1993.

The convicted officers include former Bathinda SSP Bhupinderjit Singh (61), former DSP Devinder Singh (58), former Inspector Suba Singh (83) and former ASIs Gulbarg Singh (72) and Raghubir Singh (63). They were found guilty of criminal conspiracy, murder, destruction of evidence and forgery. The fine imposed will be given to the families of the deceased as compensation.

The accused were convicted for staging two encounters in July 1993, where the victims, including three Special Police Officers (SPOs), Shinder Singh, Desa Singh and Sukhdev Singh, were illegally detained, tortured and later shown as killed in encounters.

CBI counsel Anmol Narang said, “This was a case where cops killed cops on suspicion of robbery, after which the bodies were cremated as unknown and unclaimed. The seven victims, aged between 20 and 25, were all from the same village, Rani Villa in Tarn Taran district, and were closely related.”

On June 27, 1993, Sarhali SHO Gurdev Singh and other policemen picked up SPOs Shinder Singh, Desa Singh and Sukhdev Singh along with Balkar Singh and Daljit Singh from the house of a government contractor, Joginder Singh, where they were working as gunmen. They were tortured at Sarhali police station to extract confessions about their alleged involvement in a robbery at Sangatpura village. Only Daljit Singh was later released.

A week later, on July 2, the Sarhali police registered a case claiming the three SPOs had absconded with their issued arms. Shortly after, Balkar Singh was also abducted from his home at Rani Villa village. On July 12, Bhupinderjit Singh (then DSP of Goindwal Sahib) and Inspector Gurdev Singh (Sarhali SHO) staged an encounter, claiming that while taking Mangal Singh of Karmuwala village for a recovery in a dacoity case, their team was attacked by militants. They alleged that Mangal Singh and three “attackers” -- Desa Singh, Shinder Singh and Balkar Singh -- were killed in crossfire.

Three guns and ammunition were shown as recovered, but forensic tests later proved mismatches and evidence confirmed the victims were tortured before death. Despite being identified in official records, their bodies were cremated as unclaimed.

The CBI investigation revealed that Sukhdev Singh, who was abducted on June 27, was later handed over to the Verowal police. The latter also abducted Sarabjit Singh from Hansawala village (Amritsar) and Harwinder Singh from Jalabad (Kaithal) in June/July 1993. All three were later shown as killed in another encounter a month later.

Sarabjit Singh Verka, counsel for the victims’ families, said the CBI had initially chargesheeted 10 police officers in 2002, but the trial remained stayed from 2010 to 2021. During this period, five accused died and out of 67 witnesses cited by the CBI, 36 passed away before testifying and only 28 deposed in court.