Charan Singh Babaji

Charan Singh, popularly known as Babaji, was a known Sikh religious leader of the village of Pandori Rumana, in the Tarn Taran sub-division of Amritsar district. The Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP) says he was 54 and devoted his time to organising voluntary labour and donations for the repair and maintenance of the historic Sikh shrines of Punjab. It records that the police had detained and questioned him two or three times but never brought a formal charge. Everything below is from the CCDP's incident form as Reduced to Ashes summarises it (pp. 559 to 560).

Key moments

• Early 1993: friends tell him that SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu is determined to eliminate him. He goes to Mahant Sewa Dass, a Delhi Sikh leader known to be very close to the Punjab police, who demands Rs 850,000 to save his life, and he pays it.
• 23 April 1993: a jeep of Tarn Taran police officers led by Inspector Suba Singh stopped his car near Deenpur, as he was being driven to Sandhu's office with Sewa Dass's representative, and the CCDP says they held him in illegal custody for nearly three months.
• Early July 1993: DSP Narang Singh takes him to the Sahni branch of the Bank of Baroda, where he is made to withdraw a large amount belonging to his organisation. The CCDP says the money was then distributed to senior police officers of the district.
• Night of 17 to 18 August 1993: he is killed with two others in what the CCDP calls a faked encounter at Kairon. The printed text gives the year as 1989, but the CBI's list of the cremations gives 18 August 1993, FIR 57/93, with SHO Govinder Singh of Patti police station and "police encounter" as the cause of death.

The book adds that six other close relatives of his were also abducted and disappeared by the Punjab police on different occasions. It says a judicial inquiry ordered by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, on a habeas corpus petition by the family, established these facts but failed to identify the officials responsible.

What he is remembered for. His case is one of the summaries the CCDP drew from the CBI's lists of cremations. In the CCDP's account it joins a faked encounter to the forcing of money out of a Sikh religious body, and the man who spent his time repairing shrines was killed after paying a large sum to a Delhi Sikh leader to save his life.