Advocate Ishar Singh

Ishar Singh (also spelled Isher Singh) is an advocate of the Telangana High Court. He is known to the Panth as the man who led the 2020 inquiry into the missing saroops of Sri Guru Granth Sahib at the SGPC's publication department, Gurdwara Ramsar Sahib, Amritsar. Reports describe the inquiry as the Akal Takht's, and they also describe the committee as appointed by the SGPC executive. Both are true: the Akal Takht ordered the probe and the SGPC executive put the committee in place, as the sequence below shows.

Key moments

• 17 July 2020: the Akal Takht's officiating Jathedar, Giani Harpreet Singh, announces a panel led by Justice Navita Singh, a retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, with Ishar Singh assisting. It is to report in a month on 267 missing saroops (The Tribune).
• Summer 2020: the judge steps aside for personal reasons. The SGPC executive, which had ordered an inquiry at the acting Jathedar's direction, appoints a three-member committee headed by Ishar Singh (K S Chawla, YesPunjab).
• 24 August 2020: the five Singh Sahiban meet on the panel's report. The Tribune reports that the panel found 61 more saroops misappropriated from the 2013-14 and 2014-15 ledgers, making 328, and that at least 125 saroops were allegedly put together without authority from surplus printed pages and issued without receipts. YesPunjab ties the figure of 328 to Ishar Singh's committee and says the report ran to about 1,000 pages.
• September 2020: YesPunjab reports that the SGPC executive first decided on action against officials, then reversed overnight, deciding on no criminal proceedings and action by the SGPC under Panthic tradition. The SGPC put out a 10-page summary of the findings, which the writer criticises.
• 7 December 2025: Punjab Police register an FIR against 16 people over the missing saroops (The Tribune).
• 12 January 2026: the acting Jathedar of the Akal Takht, Giani Kuldeep Singh Gargaj, tells the SGPC to cooperate with the police on this matter. News Arena reports that the Ishar Singh report found the saroops were given to the sangat through collusion between employees and officials, with the prescribed offerings neither deposited nor backed by bills, and that it names 16 accused.

Remembered for: producing the account on which the later criminal case rests, and for the number 328. The SGPC's president, Harjinder Singh Dhami, has said the report found misappropriation of money by some employees, not sacrilege (The Tribune). The report itself has not been published in full in the sources we could open.