Baljinder Singh Saido Lahil

Baljinder Singh, known as Balli, was a 22-year-old matriculate from Saido Lahil village in Amritsar district. According to the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP), he worked for a company called Nijjher Agro Food, advising farmers on the use of insecticides on vegetable crops. The CCDP's report, Reduced to Ashes, uses his case as the illustrative case in its chapter analysing the case summaries, to show how police arrest and custody worked in Punjab and how a death in custody was announced as an "encounter".

What the CCDP's incident form records (pp. 173 to 175)

• 2 August 1991: Baljinder and a police constable who guarded the company owner are arrested at a police checkpost soon after Manohar Singh, whom the form calls a "militant leader", dies there by taking cyanide. A crowd gathers outside Jandiala Guru police station and blocks the Grand Trunk Road; the police use a lathi-charge and then open fire, killing three people. Baljinder and his companion are charged under TADA, jailed for eight months and released on bail.
• 10 November 1992: about 50 policemen led by DSP Gurmeet Singh of Tarn Taran raid the farm house of his father at about 8 to 9 p.m. The DSP says he needs Baljinder to identify some men they have arrested and will release him next morning, has the father cook a meal for the policemen, and takes the son away.
• 11 to 13 November: the family and eminent persons of the village search for him at Mattewal police station and at the Mall Mandi and B.R. Model School interrogation centres in Amritsar. SSP Paramjit Singh Gill tells them that Amritsar police did not arrest him. In Tarn Taran on 13 November his father recognises some of the policemen who had eaten at the farm house, and his father went to Ajit Singh Bains, then heading the Punjab Human Rights Organisation, who issued a statement on 13 November 1992 demanding his release; several newspapers carried the statement.
• 15 November 1992: Baljinder, Rajinder Singh alias Amolak Singh and Rajbir Singh alias Raju are declared killed at 4.30 a.m. near Sehbazpur. At a press conference DGP K.P.S. Gill, with the SSPs of Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Majitha and DIG D.R. Bhatti, says that DSP Gurmeet Singh killed three "militants" at a checkpost when they fired from a stolen vehicle, and that 10 AK-47 rifles, an AK-74, 17 plastic bombs, 30 detonators, 25 magazines and 925 cartridges were recovered. All the newspapers carried this on 16 November.

The CCDP says the police fabricated the story for the press, despite eyewitnesses to his abduction, and arbitrarily deprived him of his right to life. The sources found here do not say that any court examined the case.

What he is remembered for. The CCDP chose his case as its introductory glance at the abuses of the Punjab Police because it shows, in one family's story, an arrest nobody recorded, relatives refused information, and a story made up for the press.