E-Paper
HC restrains SIT from filing challan in derogatory poster case
Acts on a plea of a Dera Sacha Sauda follower demanding the probe team be stopped from re-examining his handwriting samples
The Punjab and Haryana high court has restrained the Punjab Police’s special investigation team (SIT) probing the sacrilege cases from submitting chargesheet (challan) against an accused in a desecration incident wherein derogatory posters were pasted near the gurudwaras of Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala villages in Faridkot district on the intervening night of September 24 and 25 in 2015.
The HC bench of Justice HNS Gill acted on the plea of Sukhjinder Singh, alias Sunny, a Dera Sacha Sauda follower, who had demanded that the SIT be stopped from re-examining his handwriting samples for matching them with those on the posters.
“Till the next date of hearing, the state is restrained from filing the challan in this case,” the HC ordered fixing July 15 as the next date of hearing.
Sukhjinder had argued that the SIT is competent only to further investigate the matter and not reinvestigate it. “Once the CBI had got the petitioner’s handwriting samples compared from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) and found the same not matching with those on the incriminating posters, it is not open to the SIT again to send the samples for comparison,” his counsel had argued in the court.
Sukhjinder is among four accused in the case besides Shakti Singh, Ranjit Singh and Baljeet Singh.
On June 1 this year, the SIT collected samples of Sukhjinder to match them with the writing on the derogatory posters claiming that one of the posters was written by him.
The SIT led by then deputy inspector general (DIG) Ranbir Singh Khatra in 2018 had claimed that the handwriting of the accused dera followers had matched with the ones on the posters. But the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in its closure report filed in a Mohali court in July 2019 said the handwriting samples of the accused dera followers it had sent to the CFSL in Delhi did not match with the ones on the posters.
