Baba Sewa Singh of Gurdwara Ber Sahib

Baba Sewa Singh was the chief manager of Gurdwara Ber Sahib, on the Amritsar-Chowk Mehta road in the area of village Boparai, Amritsar district. His case is set out in Reduced to Ashes, the 2003 report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, from the committee's incident report, whose main informant was his brother Kulwant Singh.

The report says he was the son of Kartar Singh, a Mistri Sikh of village Boparai, trained in religious education, and had been chief manager since 1980-81. The gurdwara was built in memory of Guru Hargobind, and he also looked after a school run under its aegis, which had about 3,000 students. People of several villages revered him. He supported the Shiromani Akali Dal's struggle of 1982 but spent most of his time on kar seva for the gurdwara building and on running the gurdwara and the school.

The report says the army detained him in June 1984, and that the Mehta police later arrested him on the allegation that he gave shelter to "militants" in the gurdwara. It says the police registered a false case against him under the Arms Act, sent him to jail and tortured him brutally at the Mall Mandi interrogation centre in Amritsar. It adds that they searched the gurdwara many times and recovered nothing objectionable, and that he was released on bail after several months.

2 December 1992: According to the report, police stopped the gurdwara's jeep, with the sewadar Sajjan Singh and the driver Prakash Singh, as they were taking Balwinder Singh Minni, whom the report calls a "renowned militant", to Amritsar railway station. Minni took cyanide and the two men were taken into custody. At about 4 p.m. police of Mehta and Mattewal-Chogawan stations, led by Inspector Uham Singh (the report's spelling of the name), SHO of Mattewal-Chogawan, and Sarbjit Singh, SHO of Mehta, surrounded the gurdwara and let no one from the village go near it. People heard gunshots from 8 to 11 p.m., and by next morning a rumour had spread that police had shot dead Sewa Singh and the granthi Gurmej Singh.

Panchayats of the area demanded Sewa Singh's body. The police refused, but the SSP Majitha allowed it to be cremated under police supervision at the cremation ground near Gurdwara Shaheedan, with family members, devotees and local people attending. The newspapers of 3 December 1992 carried the police claim that a "fierce encounter" had taken place at the gurdwara in which they killed Sewa Singh and recovered a large quantity of lethal weapons. The report adds that the SHO of Jandiala Guru police station later arrested and killed his nephew Gurdev Singh of Pakhoke. The village observes his death anniversary every year.

He is remembered in his village and among the Panth as the gurdwara manager who was killed in the siege of his own gurdwara.