Gulshan Kumar

Gulshan Kumar was a 20-year-old of Tarn Taran, the eldest son of a family that sold vegetables, and a class VIII student who helped hawk them. His case is told in Reduced to Ashes (2003), the report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP). The CCDP recorded his case from his father in its incident report forms. The book uses it as its first example of how the police used torture to extort money from families. What follows is the family's account as the book gives it.

• 22 June 1993: according to his family, a police force led by DSP Dilbagh Singh and SHO Gurbachan Singh Manochahal of Tarn Taran City police station raided the house at about 10.30 p.m., beat the men, calling them thieves, and took Gulshan, his father and his brothers to the police station. At the station, the family says, the police pulled Gulshan's legs apart at 180 degrees and after that he could not walk. His father and brothers were released within days, but not Gulshan.
• About a week later: the family says the DSP demanded Rs 200,000 for his release, and SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu, whom his father approached, refused to intervene.
• 22 and 23 July 1993: his father saw him in custody for the last time on 22 July; a constable then told him that policemen had removed Gulshan and might have killed him in an "encounter". On 23 July newspapers reported an "encounter" near Palasaur bridge in which Tarn Taran police had reportedly killed Jarnail Singh and three other unidentified "militants", with a photograph that showed Gulshan among the three. The police cremated the bodies themselves and did not let the family attend.
• 24 July 1993: when his father asked at the police station why his son had been killed as an unidentified "militant", the family says, the DSP and the SHO told him to keep his mouth shut and threatened to eliminate them in the same way if they complained.
• From August 1996: his father answered the CBI's public notice of 8 August 1996 with a written complaint. He says he was then threatened and urged by two senior officers to take money and settle, and refused. His writ petition in the High Court was still pending in 2003.
• The CBI: the book says the CBI investigated and found the police officers prima facie guilty of the abduction and extra-judicial killing of Gulshan Kumar, and filed a charge sheet against DSP Dilbagh Singh, SHO Gurbachan Singh Manochahal, SI Balbir Singh, ASI Devinder Singh and ASI Arjan Singh. The case was still pending for trial in 2003.

The SHO named in the account is a police officer. The book uses the same name elsewhere (p. 348) for a Kharku leader, so the two are not to be confused.

What he is remembered for: Gulshan Kumar is one of the named cases in Reduced to Ashes in which a CBI inquiry led to a charge sheet against police officers. The sources opened do not say how the trial ended.