Bhai Gurdev Singh Kaunke

Bhai Gurdev Singh Kaunke was acting Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib from 1986 until police took him from his home in December 1992. Wikipedia says he was born in 1949 at Kaunke Kalan in Ludhiana district and trained at the Damdami Taksal. Sikh Siyasat News calls him Shaheed.

Key moments

• 26 January 1986: the Sarbat Khalsa at Sri Akal Takht Sahib named Bhai Jasbir Singh Rode as Jathedar and put Kaunke in as his deputy. 1984 Tribute says he was installed as vice; The Tribune calls him the Takht’s former acting Jathedar.
• 29 April 1986: Wikipedia says police arrested him at the Harmandir Sahib complex after the Declaration of Khalistan, and that he was arrested and released several times over the years.
• 20 December 1992: he was picked up from his home and released after villagers intervened, following a bereavement in the family. On 25 December he was arrested again and did not return (The Tribune).
• 2 January 1993: an FIR at Sidhwan Bet police station said he had escaped during an ambush while being taken to recover arms. His son’s High Court petition calls the FIR concocted and says it was not disclosed to the court hearing his wife’s habeas corpus petition, in which police affidavits said he had never been arrested.

What the record says about his death: There are two kinds of account. The state’s own inquiry, ordered in 1998 and carried out by BP Tiwari, then Additional DGP (Security), reported in July 1999 and became public only in December 2023, through the Punjab Human Rights Organisation. It questioned the claim that Kaunke escaped, found that he was taken into custody, and could not establish that he was tortured to death there. It recommended an FIR against the then Jagraon SHO, Gurmeet Singh, for wrongful confinement and falsifying records, and a further inquiry into other officers (The Tribune).

The other account comes from the human rights worker Ram Narayan Kumar, who traced two police witnesses. Darshan Singh, a former officer, says he saw Kaunke lying dead in a room at Jagraon used for torture, and calls the escape story a cover-up, asking how a dead man could escape. An SSP, whose name was withheld at his request, told Kumar there was no evidence Kaunke had committed any crime (World Sikh Organization of Canada, drawing on Kumar’s writing).

Since then: on 25 December 2023 Takht Jathedar Giani Raghbir Singh directed the SGPC to take legal recourse. On 5 February 2024 the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued notice to the state on a petition by his son, Hari Singh Sekhon, who alleges that three former officers filed false affidavits. These are the petitioner’s allegations, and no reply from the officers was reported.

What he is remembered for: holding the Akal Takht’s office from 1986, and a custodial disappearance that his family was still pressing in court more than thirty years later.