New Delhi: Medical evidence of torture, ballistic reports disproving a match between recovered cartridge casings and seized weapons, and fabricated police records and witness accounts were among the key findings that led a special CBI court to hand life sentences to five retired Punjab Police officers for killing seven men in staged encounters over 30 years ago.
The court in SAS Nagar (Mohali) found the officers guilty of abducting, torturing and executing the seven men in fake encounters in Tarn Taran in 1993, convicting them under erstwhile Indian Penal Code sections for criminal conspiracy (120-B), murder (302), causing disappearance of evidence (201) and framing incorrect records as public servants (218).
The sentence was pronounced on 4 August, three days after the conviction on 1 August. The detailed 117-page judgment document was uploaded on the court website on Tuesday night. The CBI court’s verdict is a scathing rebuke of custodial violence and fake encounters, often concealed under the pretext of counter-insurgency.
The court said that police officers are entrusted with “immense public trust”, and must act lawfully and transparently, but in this case, the accused “blatantly disregarded the law and their official obligations”. The victims, suspected of petty crimes, “could and should have been prosecuted in accordance with due process”, it added.
The court underscored that “extrajudicial killings were wholly unwarranted”, and there was “no legal justification for killing them in a fake encounter, nor for subsequently cremating their bodies under the false pretext of being unclaimed (lawaris)”. The judgment began with the mention of a 2012 top court verdict, saying, “Fake encounter killings by the police are nothing but cold-blooded murders.”
Those sentenced include former Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Bhupinderjit Singh (61), former Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Davinder Singh (58), former Inspector Suba Singh (83), and Assistant Sub-Inspectors (ASIs) Gulabarg Singh (72) and Raghbir Singh (63). Each of the convicts has also been fined Rs 3.5 lakh, totalling Rs 17.5 lakh, to be disbursed as compensation to the victims’ families.
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Cremation of ‘unclaimed’ bodies to SC’s intervention
The case dates back to August 1996, when Narinder Kaur, wife of one of the victims, Special Police Officer (SPO) Shinder Singh, filed an affidavit alleging that her husband had been abducted and killed by police, and his body cremated as “unclaimed” or “lawaris”.
Her petition led the Supreme Court, in December 1996, to direct the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the mass cremations of unidentified bodies in Punjab during the 1990s. Based on this, the CBI registered a preliminary enquiry in 1996, and a regular case in June 1999.
The court, in its verdict, described the case as a “grim narrative of abuse and gross misuse of official authority”, remarking that the police actions “obliterated” the fundamental distinction between an unregulated armed group and a police force, which is bound to uphold the rule of law.
The victims
The seven victims, aged between 20 and 25, were not “militants or terrorists”, the court said in its verdict. Four of them were SPOs working as gunmen for a government contractor, Joginder Singh, while the three others were serving Punjab Police personnel. Five of the victims were Dalits.
The court, before examining the facts, said the victims’ only alleged “transgression was suspicion of involvement in minor robberies”. Despite this, all seven were abducted, detained illegally, tortured and then executed, with their deaths falsely shown as the result of “encounters” with militants. Their bodies were subsequently cremated as “unclaimed”, even though police records acknowledged their identities.
Two staged encounters in July 1993
According to the court order, in the first incident on 12 July, 1993, four SPOs were picked up by a police team led by SHO Gurdev Singh (now deceased) from Joginder Singh’s residence. They were taken to Sarhali Police Station and tortured. A fifth person, Daljit Singh, who was also detained, was later released.
Police subsequently filed an FIR at Sarhali Police Station, claiming the SPOs had absconded with weapons. Another accused, Balkar Singh, was also taken into custody, along with Mangal Singh, who was already under arrest for an unrelated and separate robbery case.
The four detainees—Desa Singh, Chhinder Singh, Balkar Singh and Mangal Singh—were shot dead the same day. An FIR falsely recorded the killings as an anti-terror operation supervised by then DSP Bhupinderjit Singh.
In the second incident on 28 July, 1993, Sukhdev Singh, who had been separated from the first group, was shifted to Verowal Police Station, along with Sarabjit Singh and Harvinder Singh, who had been picked up from nearby villages.
The three were detained and tortured, some even fastened in a wooden restraining device called a kath, and later shot in the head or chest. These murders were again portrayed as a militant encounter under a different FIR in Verowal Police Station. DSP Bhupinderjit Singh also supervised this second fake encounter.
A carefully ‘orchestrated’ cover-up
The CBI, in its investigation, meticulously dismantled the police’s “genuine encounter” theory, relying on several critical pieces of evidence. Among eyewitness testimonies, over a dozen family members and villagers confirmed the illegal detentions, naming the officers and describing the torture. Postmortem reports showed injuries—fractured noses, black eyes and healed wrist wounds—proving physical torture. Doctors testified that these injuries were inconsistent with crossfire or gun battles.
The most “vital evidence” against the accused was the forensic ballistic expert’s report, which revealed that spent cartridges collected by the police from the alleged encounter sites did not match the weapons purportedly recovered from the victims who, according to the accused, had cross-fired to defend themselves. This indicated that the weapons and cartridges were “planted” by the police, further undermining the authenticity of the encounters, the court said.
Official police documents had contradictory serial numbers for weapons used by the police, no ammunition logs—meaning there was no record of how many bullets were used or spent—and conflicting explanations for missing officially issued cartridges, if any.
The police knowingly disposed of the bodies as “unclaimed”, even though three were serving SPOs, and one was already under police custody. This, the court said, showed that there was a mass cover-up to hide the brutality and the actual event.
Roles of the convicted officers
The court order detailed how each officer played a part in the crimes.
Ex-SSP Bhupinderjit Singh, a DSP at the time, was present at both encounters and sanctioned the police firing. His logbook entries were found inconsistent with the FIRs, implicating him in the conspiracy.
Both ex-DSP Davinder Singh and ex-ASI Gulabarg Singh were actively involved in the 12 July killings as they escorted the bodies, and signed off on postmortem reports and weapon recovery memos that were found to be manipulated.
Ex-inspector Suba Singh prepared the fake FIR for the 28 July encounter and manipulated police records to justify the killings, while ex-ASI Raghbir Singh countersigned key seizure memos for fake recoveries, and was actively involved in the second staged encounter.
Defence arguments
The defence had argued that the CBI’s probe was biased and delayed, and that no sanction was obtained under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which protects public servants from prosecution without prior approval. The court held that extrajudicial killings are not protected acts performed in an official capacity.
The defence also attempted to justify the delay in the FIR due to the victims’ socio-economic background and police involvement in the cover-up. The court, however, rejected the contentions.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)