On 21 Dec, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court convicted three Panjab police personnel—then Tarn Taran Station House Officer Gurbachan Singh, Assistant Sub Inspector Hans Raj, and Sub Inspector Resham Singh—for the murder and criminal conspiracy leading to the deaths of Jagdeep Singh (alias Makhan) and Gurnam Singh (alias Pali) in 1992. According to the charge sheet, Jagdeep and Gurnam were abducted by police on separate occasions in November 1992 and killed on 30 Nov 1992 in a staged encounter described in police records as an ‘armed exchange involving militants’. The police later cremated the two men as unidentified, unclaimed bodies, which the CBI deemed to be a cover-up in its case registered on 27 Feb 1997. Complainant Pritam Singh, father of Jagdeep, recorded his statement in November 1996, prompting the CBI investigation. After conviction, the court took the three accused into custody and they were awarded life terms. During the lengthy trial, which involved 46 prosecution witnesses, 18 died before proceedings concluded. One of the accused, Arjun Singh, died in December 2021. In another case, Gautam Cheema, a 1995-batch Indian Police Service officer of the Panjab cadre, along with five others, has been sentenced to eight months imprisonment by a Special CBI Court in Mohali. The case pertains to the wrongful detention of Sumedh Gulati, who was forcibly taken from the lawful custody of Police Station Phase-I, Mohali, in 2014. Meanwhile, on 19 Dec, through a written communication, supposedly for security reasons, the Registrar of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has requested the media to refrain from naming judges in their reports on court proceedings, orders, and judgments.
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