Mall Mandi Interrogation Centre

The Mall Mandi Interrogation Centre was a Punjab Police interrogation centre of the Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA) in Amritsar. Reduced to Ashes, the 2003 report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, names it in many of its case summaries as a place where families went to look for relatives who had been arrested or abducted, and where, according to those families, people were tortured.

What the record says. These are the families' accounts as the book sets them down.

• Harjit Singh of Butter Kalan. The book says police took him off a bus near Thathian on 29 April 1992. His father, Kashmir Singh, filed a habeas corpus petition in the High Court (writ petition 615/1992), and Justice H. K. Sandhu sent a warrant officer, R. L. Bhatia. The book says Bhatia reached the centre on 17 October 1992 and saw Harjit Singh inside, but was kept outside until the officer in charge, SP B. R. Sharma, arrived, by which time police had removed Harjit through a back door. Bhatia confirmed this in his report to the High Court dated 21 October 1992. His findings led to two more inquiries, by the sessions judge of Chandigarh and then the CBI, and a case based on them was still pending at Patiala when the book went to press (p. 180).
• Manjinder Singh and two others. The book says police arrested them in the market at Jandiala Guru on 28 or 29 April 1992 and took them to this centre, where the family could find no responsible officer to speak to. On 7 May 1992 the newspaper Ajit reported Manjinder Singh and Gurdev Singh Bhutoo killed in an encounter near Dala Kalan (pp. 163 to 164).
• Rajinder Singh. The book says he was taken from the SSP's office to the centre on 3 September 1992 and tortured, and that when his father obtained a High Court order to search the centre, senior police found out and moved him. It says Rajinder has since disappeared, and it names DSP Darshan Singh Mann as the officer in charge of the centre (p. 461).
• Torture. The book says Punjab Police officers from the centre tortured Kishan Singh, father of Tarlochan Singh, tying his hands behind him and hanging him from a ceiling hook until he lost the use of his arms (p. 189). It says Baba Sewa Singh, chief manager of Gurdwara Ber Sahib, was sent here after his arrest and brutally tortured (p. 587).
• Searches. On 11 November 1992 the family of Baljinder Singh of Saido Lahil looked for him at Mattewal police station, at this centre and at the B.R. Model School interrogation centre (p. 174).

What it means today. The centre's place in the record rests on these family accounts and on the warrant officer's report to the High Court in Harjit Singh's case. The sources opened for this page give no court finding about the centre as a whole.