SSP Paramjit Singh Gill

Paramjit Singh Gill was a senior superintendent of police (SSP) in the Amritsar area during the years of the counter-insurgency. Reduced to Ashes (2003), the report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP), names him chiefly as SSP of the Majitha police district between 1991 and 1993, and once as SSP "of Amritsar". Families went to him when relatives were taken, and newspapers quoted him on "encounters". He is not KPS Gill, the director general of police. What follows is what families told the CCDP and what the book quotes from the police; the sources opened report no court finding on him.

Key moments

• March 1991: newspapers quoted him as the source of a report that two men in custody, Satnam Singh Bhagupur and Satnam Singh Sugga, were killed when their companions tried to rescue them. The families could not attend the cremations (p. 409).
• 5 April 1992: according to the CCDP's record, a midnight raid led by SSP Paramjit Singh Gill and SHO Surjit Singh of Mehta police station arrested the Sikh Students Federation leader Harjinder Singh and his wife; both were reported killed on 23 June 1992 (pp. 580 to 581).
• April 1992: the family of Balwinder Singh Binda says the SHO told them he had been sent to Amritsar on the SSP's instructions. On 9 April newspapers reported a statement by the SSP that Balwinder was killed in an encounter while being taken to recover weapons (p. 429).
• 3 September 1992: the family of Rajinder Singh says the SSP asked him to come and see him, that the SSP's bodyguards took him into custody when he arrived, and that he was tortured at the Mall Mandi interrogation centre. When the High Court sent a warrant officer to search for him there, the family says, senior police removed him; he has since disappeared (p. 461).
• 10 to 15 November 1992: the family of Baljinder Singh of Saido Lahil, searching for him, was told by SSP Gill that Amritsar police were not involved in his arrest and that Baljinder was not in his custody. On 15 November DGP KPS Gill announced Baljinder's death in an encounter, with the SSPs of Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Majitha beside him (p. 174).
• 22 November 1993: officers of the Majitha police district led by SSP Gill and DSP Darshan Singh Mann arrested a man named Satnam from a house at Nagar village; the book says he was tortured for two days and declared killed in an "encounter" near Khihalan on 24 November (p. 483).

The book also names a DSP Paramjit Singh Gill, with SHO Surinder Singh Sood of Majitha, in a raid of 27 August 1989 (pp. 401, 559), and does not say whether he is the same man.

His part in this history: he is the senior officer of the Majitha district in the CCDP's accounts for 1991 to 1993, and the officer who led the arrest of the Sikh Students Federation leader Harjinder Singh in April 1992.