The case of Harvinderjit Singh and Mandeep Singh

Outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar complex were Harvinderjit Singh and Mandeep Singh were killed. - HARPREET SINGH

What Reduced to Ashes says

Based on testimony provided mainly by Harvinderjit Singh's father, Sawinder Singh Gill, Reduced to Ashes states that on May 22, 1992, both young men were shot dead in cold blood by a Punjab Police officer. "When Harvinderjit and Mandeep exited the Golden Temple complex," Reduced to Ashes claims, DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police) Ratan Lal Monga, who was in plainclothes, caught Harvinderjit by his arm and asked him to get himself frisked.

Harvinderjit still did not know that the man he was quarrelling with was a Punjab Police officer when DSP Monga ordered his subordinates to shoot him. Harvinderjit was shot and he collapsed dead there on the road.

Mandeep Singh, who had been trying to intervene to end the quarrel, was shocked to see his friend shot and lying on the road in a pool of blood. A confused and perplexed Mandeep ran into a tea shop to save himself, but DSP Monga came after him, had him dragged out and shot.

The record

Several elements of this account are challenged by FIR 36, lodged after the shooting, and other official documents. Most important, Reduced to Ashes does not note that DSP Monga himself sustained a serious bullet injury to his arm during the encounter with Harvinderjit Singh and Mandeep Singh. The injury, a little time spent with now-Superintendent of Police Monga makes clear, continues to hinder his use of the limb. Constables Jasbir Singh and Surjit Singh also suffered injuries. Two Mauser side-arms, one .30 bore and the other .32 bore, were recovered from the bodies, along with a stick bomb. According to the FIR, three young men drove towards a police picket commanded by Monga at 2-15 p.m., on a red Yamaha motorcycle, PB 02D 2728. When asked to stop, the men opened fire at the picket, and police returned fire killing two terrorists, while a third escaped. It is unclear why this case has been included in a book on disappearances and illegal cremations, since by the both the police account and the information provided by Reduced to Ashes itself, Gill witnessed the cremation of his son.

Eyewitness testimony

Puran Singh, who owns a tailor'sruns a tailoring shop opposite the location of the encounter, says he did not pay much attention to the police picket being set up in the area. This, he says, was a fairly common occurrence. He was busy with his business when he heard bullet fire, after which he ducked under his shop counter - a very natural reaction. Three other witnesses in the Brahm Buta market provided essentially similar accounts.

The owner of the tea stall where Mandeep Singh was killed first told Frontline that he was not in his shop at the time of the killings. Later, he claimed to have witnessed the whole affair, saying that the two young men were first shot by Monga's guards. Monga, he claimed, then turned his gun on his guards, and finally on himself. No eyewitness could corroborate the somewhat theatrical claim made in Reduced to Ashes that "Harvinderjit still did not know that the man he was quarrelling with was a Punjab police officer when DSP Monga ordered his subordinates to shoot him."