After a legal battle spanning 34 years, former Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Gurmeet Singh Randhawa has been convicted by a special CBI court in Mohali in a 1992 kidnapping and disappearance case involving transporter Amrik Singh Sakri.
The verdict was delivered on Wednesday by Special Judge Yukti Goyal, where the court convicted Randhawa in the case but acquitted another accused, Parminderjit, giving him the benefit of doubt. The quantum of sentence for Randhawa will be announced on Thursday.
The case dates back to November 25, 1992, when Amrik Singh Sakri was allegedly picked up by the Tarn Taran police while attending a marriage function in Ludhiana and he subsequently went missing, and his disappearance became part of a larger investigation into alleged illegal detentions, enforced disappearances and illegal cremations during Punjab's anti-terror operations.
The matter came to the attention of the CBI after Amrik Kaur, an Amritsar-based woman whose husband Amrik Singh and son had gone missing, approached the Supreme Court seeking justice, and she later submitted an affidavit before the CBI in 1997, following which the agency investigated the allegations.
The CBI registered cases against Randhawa in 1997 and 2000 over allegations of abduction, kidnapping and the subsequent elimination of Sikh men during the militancy period.
The investigation followed a public notice issued by the CBI regarding the disposal of unidentified and unclaimed bodies in the police districts of Amritsar, Majitha and Tarn Taran between June 1984 and 1994.
Earlier, on January 16, 1996, the Shiromani Akali Dal's human rights wing had claimed that a large number of people had disappeared during the period, and it also alleged that police personnel had brought more than 2,000 unclaimed bodies for cremation in Amritsar, Tarn Taran and adjoining areas.
In 2015, the Punjab government terminated Randhawa's services while he was serving as SSP of Fatehgarh Sahib and the action came amid the two CBI cases registered against him over allegations linked to the disappearance and killing of Sikh men during anti-terror operations.
The latest conviction marks a significant development in a decades-old case connected to allegations of custodial disappearances during the militancy period in Punjab and the court is scheduled to announce Randhawa's sentence on Thursday.
