Ruchika’s case gives Punjab family hope
Fresh action against former Haryana police chief S.P.S. Rathore has revived hopes of a 92 -year-old woman, whose son and son-in-law were allegedly set on fire 16 years ago on the orders of controversial Punjab Police officer S.S. Saini.
Fresh action against former Haryana police chief S.P.S. Rathore has revived hopes of a 92 -year-old woman, whose son and son-in-law were allegedly set on fire 16 years ago on the orders of controversial Punjab Police officer S.S. Saini.
She has now demanded that the trial against him be expedited.
Following the abduction and murder of her son, son-in-law and their driver Mukhtiar Singh in 1994, Amar Kaur and her younger son Ashish Kumar have been fighting for justice.
A feud between Sumedh Singh Saini and the Ludhiana-based family is said be the reason behind the kidnapping and murder. Saini was then posted as the district police chief. He is currently the state vigilance chief with an Additional Director General of Police rank.
The Supreme Court had shifted the trial to Delhi and a special CBI court had framed charges against Saini and three other state police officials in December 2006.
Saini challenged the trial court’s decision to frame charges in the Delhi High Court, which refused to stay the proceedings in the lower court, and the matter is pending.
“The case of accused Saini… is exactly similar, perhaps more serious than what happened to Ruchika. He abducted my son Vinod Kumar, son-in-law Ashok Kumar and their driver on March 15, 1994 and they were never found,” Kaur said in a letter to Punjab chief minister, union home and law ministers, and the CBI Director.
“We want to know why Saini has not been suspended so far, even though more than three years have passed since charges were framed against him in a Delhi court? On the contrary he has been given promotions,” Ashish told reporters.
He produced documents to show that a Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, Justice V.K. Jhanji, had in a verdict delivered in 1994, written that he was threatened for ordering registration of an FIR against Saini.
“During this time I had been receiving anonymous telephone calls threatening me to wash away my hands from this case, and one caller had gone to the extent of saying that I would be picked up and thrown in a furnace like the three,” Justice Jhanji wrote in his judgment.
But, Kaur says she has lost hope. “I am on the verge of ending my life, I am left with no hope to see that the accused ... will be sentenced and justice will be done...,” she said in a statement.