Villagers used as a human shield in the Behla siege

Who: A large mixed force of the Punjab Police, led by SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu and SP (operations) Khubi Ram, and units of the Army and paramilitary, according to Reduced to Ashes, the report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP). In the house were three Kharku Singhs of the Bhindranwala Tigers Force: Surjit Singh Behla, described as its senior leader, Sukhdev Singh “Maddi” and Harbans Singh of Sarhali. The villagers made to walk in front of the force were Kartar Singh, Niranjan Singh, his son Sakatter Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, Gurmej Singh and Ajit Singh. The book says the police chose them at random and that those it describes had no known ties to Kharku groups.

What: On the morning of 8 June 1992 the force surrounded the abandoned house of Manjinder Singh, a former member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly, where the three men were said to be hiding. The book says the police rounded up seven or eight villagers to walk ahead of them as a human shield. Inside, the security forces found a cellar with no inside door and began to break through its roof. When the men in the cellar opened fire, the book says, the police pushed the villagers to the front and fired back from behind them. The siege lasted about 30 to 32 hours. Six villagers and the three Kharkus died; two others, the village sarpanch and Niranjan Singh's son Sukhchain Singh, were wounded and survived.

On the evening of 9 June the police removed all nine bodies and cremated them at Tarn Taran; only Ajit Singh's family was allowed to attend. The next morning, the book says, the police told the media that they had killed nine "militants". Newspapers questioned that, and the Punjab government announced an inquiry that the book says was never held. Reduced to Ashes adds that the CBI's lists of police cremations later record eight of the nine bodies under FIR 57/92 of Tarn Taran City police station, three as identified and five as partially identified. Niranjan Singh is entered a second time, as an identified cremation dated 18 April 1991, and Gurmej Singh's body is on no list.

Where: The village of Behla in the Tarn Taran subdivision of Amritsar district (now Tarn Taran district). The bodies were taken to Tarn Taran.

Why it mattered: The authors say the Army's part in the raid “obviously surpasses any special powers conferred by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act”. They add that the information needed to identify the five on the partially identified list was available to the police and had been published in newspapers, and ask why the CBI left them there.