Bhai Anokh Singh Ubhoke

Bhai Anokh Singh Ubhoke was a Kharku from Ubhoke village in Amritsar district, a close associate of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who later led a group called the Fauj-e-Khalsa. A wire report in December 1992 named him as its chief when police announced that he had been killed. The circumstances of his death are told in two ways, and this entry keeps both.

A Sikh memorial page gives his birth as 18 December 1952 at Ubhoke, the eldest of three children of Jaswinder Singh Fauji and Pritam Kaur. It says he served as Bhindranwale's bodyguard, took part in the defence of Sri Harmandir Sahib in June 1984, was arrested by the army, was held in the jails of Amritsar, Ludhiana, Nabha and Jodhpur, and was released after about five years, after which he founded the Fauj-e-Khalsa of Khalistan. That account is the memorial's own, and no independent record of those years was found.

Key moments

• December 1992, the police account: UPI reported on 27 December 1992 that police had killed Anokh Singh, whom it spelled Uboke, on the Saturday in a gunbattle in an area south of Amritsar. It named him chief of the Fauj-e-Khalsa and a close aide of Bhindranwale. Police said he was wanted for nearly 1,000 killings and was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle when he was shot.
• December 1992, the Sikh account: the memorial page says he was arrested unarmed at Govindwal, tortured again, and killed by police in a "fake encounter", and it gives the date as 24 December 1992. The two accounts differ on the date and on whether he was armed.
• May 2017: Captain Amarinder Singh, then Chief Minister of Punjab, disclosed that 21 Sikhs who had surrendered to Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar were later killed, and said he felt betrayed. The SGPC called for a high-level inquiry, calling it a fake encounter and a violation of human rights, and asked that the names of the 21 be made public (The Tribune, 24 May 2017). The reports opened here do not name Anokh Singh among them.

What he is remembered for: Sikh memorial sites honour him as a Shaheed, a companion of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who stayed to defend Sri Harmandir Sahib. The police figures for his alleged killings are the police's own claims and are not independently confirmed here.