E-Paper
Capt govt secretly pardoned Punjab DIG who killed Bhagat Singh’s kin
Kuljit Singh Dhatt’s family, which had fought a 25-year-long battle for justice and had filed a plea for enhancement of sentence, was not even aware of the governor’s pardon to former Punjab DIG Basra
The previous Congress government in Punjab surreptitiously pardoned a retired deputy inspector general (DIG) of police, who in 2014 was among three cops convicted of abducting and eliminating Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s kin Kuljit Singh Dhatt in a fake encounter dating back to 1989.
Dhatt’s family, which had fought a 25-year-long battle for justice and had filed a plea against a meagre five-year jail term pronounced by a Hoshiarpur court, was not even aware of the governor’s pardon, the orders for which were issued in July last year, it is learnt. Captain Amarinder Singh was the Punjab chief minister at the time.
The cop in question is DIG SPS Basra (retd) while the victim was the brother of Bhagat Singh’s younger sister Parkash Kaur’s son-in-law Harbhajan Singh Dhatt. A former sarpanch of Ambala Jattan village and a sugar mill owner, Kuljit Singh Dhatt, then 35, was picked up by the Hoshiarpur police in July 1989 in connection with the murder of another sarpanch. His whereabouts were not known after that.
While police maintained that Dhatt had escaped from their custody, Canada-based Parkash Kaur filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court against then Hoshiarpur superintendent of police SPS Basra besides four other cops, accusing them of killing Dhatt in a fake encounter.
The Supreme Court had got the charges investigated by a judicial commission which in its report submitted in October 1993 held the police story about Dhatt’s escape as fabricated. It took another three years for an FIR to be lodged against the erring cops in 1996.
Stuck in legal tangles for years during which two of the accused died, the case was finally decided on May 9, 2014, when a Hoshiarpur court held Basra and two others guilty of abduction with an intent to kill, illegal confinement and criminal conspiracy and sentenced them to five-year jail.
Spent just six months in jail
Basra spent just over six months in jail before the Punjab and Haryana high court, vide its order dated November 17, 2014, suspended the sentence pending his appeal for acquittal. Meanwhile, Dhatt’s family, too, moved the high court for enhancing the sentence. Even as both appeals were still to be decided, the Punjab government pardoned the retired DIG, which according to sources was done at the behest of a senior bureaucrat and a politician.
According to the government order, a copy of which has been accessed by the Hindustan Times, the Punjab governor exercising his powers under Article 161 of the Constitution of India took the decision on Basra’s “application to consider his pardon case sympathetically” while “keeping in view the relevant material and facts, mitigating factors and special circumstances of the aforesaid case” on the basis of reports submitted by the Punjab DGP and ADGP (prisons).
When contacted, ADGP (prisons) Parveen Kumar Sinha said he had made the recommendation as per the jail manual. “I won’t share any details with you. File an RTI application,” he said, while confirming that the final orders had been issued. The orders were issued by the principal secretary, jails department, on July 23, 2021.
No one consulted us: Family
Eight months on, Dhatt’s brother Harbhajan Singh expressed shock over the development and claimed no one had consulted his family before deciding on Basra’s application for pardon. “I can’t believe it. How can the government take a decision, when our petition for enhancement of punishment is pending in the high court and we are waiting for the hearing?” he questioned.
Harbhajan Singh appealed to Punjab chief minister designate Bhagwant Mann to intervene in the matter if he truly believed in Bhagat Singh, at whose ancestral village Khatkar Kalan he will be taking oath on March 16. “Bhagwant Mann should dismiss all officials who signed the pardon file, and order a judicial inquiry against the politicians involved in the case,” said Harbhajan Singh.
