Durgiana Mandir Cremation Ground

The Durgiana Mandir cremation ground lies in Amritsar city, near the Durgiana Mandir. It is one of three grounds in Amritsar district whose records the human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra examined in 1994 and 1995, along with those at Patti and Tarn Taran. During the Punjab counter-insurgency, police brought bodies here for cremation as unclaimed or unidentified.

What the record says

• 16 January 1995: a press note of the Akali Dal's human rights wing, signed by Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon, said that Durgiana Mandir had received the largest number of unclaimed bodies in Amritsar district, about 2,000 from 1 June 1984 to the end of 1994, against 700 at Tarn Taran and 400 at Patti. The ground's officials told the team they could not show records and pointed it to the Amritsar registrar of births and deaths (pp. 54, 603 to 604).
• From the registrar's records the press note says that in one year of Beant Singh's government (the book's own text says 1992) police brought 300 unclaimed bodies here: 112 were named and the rest declared unidentified; 41 deaths were put down to bullet injuries or encounters, with no cause recorded for 259; post-mortems were done on 24 bodies and not on 276.
• Cases named in the press note: Baghel Singh alias Gurdarshan Singh of Deriwal, whose arrest in Bihar was reported in the Punjab press, was cremated here as unidentified on 19 January 1992 although police knew his identity and village. Piara Singh, a director of the Central Co-operative Bank in Amritsar, was taken from a relative's farm at Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh by a party dressed as doctors and ended at this ground on 16 December 1992. Pargat Singh "Bullet", abducted from the Guru Nanak Hospital in Amritsar, was cremated here as unidentified on 3 November 1992 (p. 604).
• The book's account of Khalra's research names a friend, a cooperative bank director, as Dara Singh, killed as an unidentified "militant" and cremated here, which led Khalra to the registers. The press note names a bank director called Piara Singh. The book does not say whether these are one case (p. 54).
• 6 May 1992: Manjinder Singh and Gurdev Singh Bhutoo, reported in the press of 7 May as killed in an encounter near Dala Kalan, were cremated here; their families, who say police had arrested them earlier, collected the ashes (p. 164).
• The CBI later listed 2,097 bodies cremated by Punjab Police as unclaimed or unidentified in the police districts of Amritsar, Majitha and Tarn Taran between June 1984 and December 1994: 582 identified, 278 partly identified and 1,237 unidentified (NHRC public notice, 2004).

What it means today. The Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab put the wood-purchase records of Durgiana Mandir and Patti before the Supreme Court in its petition (p. 5). Khalra was abducted on 6 September 1995 and killed in custody that October.