Bhai Gurmeet Singh Fauji

Gurmeet Singh Fauji of Badgaon Bal village in Boondi, Rajasthan, is one of the Sikh prisoners known as Bandi Singhs. The Tribune's list of 11 January 2015, which set out the Shiromani Akali Dal's list of 13 prisoners whose release it wanted from the Centre, names him as number 12. He is treated here as a living person, so what follows keeps to what The Tribune and ThePrint reported. He is a different man from Bhai Gurmeet Singh of the Beant Singh assassination case, and from the Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.

The Tribune says he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 8 August 2005 under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, in a murder case it describes as "suspectedly of a police informer", and that he was lodged in Bikaner jail. It adds that he had availed no parole and had no jail offence, and that he had come out of jail once, for his daughter's marriage.

Key moments

• 8 August 2005: sentenced to life under section 302 (The Tribune).
• December 2014: Parkash Singh Badal, then chief minister of Punjab, wrote to the Centre and the state governments forwarding a list of 13 prisoners and demanding their release. ThePrint names "Gurmeet Singh (Rajasthan jail)" among them.
• January 2015: ThePrint says the Akalis and the SGPC met the then Union home minister, Rajnath Singh, over the issue and were told it needed consideration.
• September 2019: the Centre announced the release of eight prisoners on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. He was not among the eight ThePrint names.

The sources opened say nothing of his life before the case, or of what became of him after 2015.