Tarn Taran Cremation Ground

The Tarn Taran cremation ground is the municipal cremation ground of Tarn Taran, in the district formed in 2006 out of Amritsar district. It is the third of the grounds, with Durgiana Mandir in Amritsar and Patti, whose records Jaswant Singh Khalra examined in 1994 and 1995.

What the record says

• Khalra's finding. Reduced to Ashes, the 2003 report of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, says Khalra discovered "similar cremations" at Tarn Taran to those at Durgiana and Patti but "was unable to obtain copies of the records" (p. 54).
• 16 January 1995. His press note said 700 unclaimed bodies had been brought to the Tarn Taran municipality's cremation grounds, and that the only record was the receipt book through which firewood was issued for the bodies, with the date and number of bodies on it (p. 603).
• 28 July 1995. At a press conference in Amritsar Khalra said police had secretly cremated 1,135 bodies at "the Jain Sabha cremation ground in the district". The book does not say whether that is the same ground (p. 58).
• 22 July 1996. The CBI's interim report to the Supreme Court disclosed 984 illegal cremations at a crematorium in Tarn Taran between 1984 and 1994 (pp. 9, X).
• The CBI's final lists. For 1992 alone the book gives, for the Tarn Taran police district, 124 identified, 49 partly identified and 188 unidentified cremations (pp. 161 to 162).
• Families. The book says that on 9 June 1992 police removed the bodies of the nine people who died in the operation at Behla, six of them villagers used as a human shield, and cremated them at Tarn Taran, and that only Ajit Singh's family was allowed to attend (p. 195). It says that when the relatives of Nirvail Singh and Ram Dev Singh came from the hospital on 14 April 1991 the pyres were already burning (p. 260). It says Mohinder Singh found his son Harbhajan's steel bangle in the ashes of the pyre an attendant showed him in July 1991 (p. 591), and that on 1 January 1993 the family of Gurpreet Singh found that police had cremated five bodies on one pyre (p. 336).

What it means today. Khalra could not get copies of this ground's records, so what is known of it comes from the CBI's lists, from his press note and from families' accounts. The CBI's interim report named Tarn Taran in July 1996; on 12 December 1996 the Supreme Court recorded that the CBI's final report disclosed 2,097 cremations in three crematoria of Amritsar district and sent the matter to the National Human Rights Commission (pp. X to XI).