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Ludhiana: Convicted for corruption, ASI booked in missing file case
The matter came to fore when a suspect, who was booked by the Salem Tabri police in a case of liquor smuggling, filed a petition in thePunjab and Haryana high court accusing the police of not filing a chargesheet in that case
A day after being convicted in a corruption case, assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Balwinder Ram has been booked for “misplacing a case file intentionally”. The errant cop is said to have made a fake entry in the record to prove he sent the case file to a court for the trial.
The Salem Tabri police have registered an FIR against him on the statement of inspector Bittan Kumar, station house officer (SHO) at the Salem Tabri police station. The matter came to fore when a suspect, who was booked by the Salem Tabri police in a case of liquor smuggling, moved the Punjab and Haryana high court and filed a petition accusing the police of not filing a chargesheet in that case.
The petitioner said that while a case under Sections 61, 1 and 14 of the Excise Act was lodged against him at the Salem Tabri police station on December 26, 2015, the police failed to produce a charge-sheet. The next hearing of the case is on December 9.
Assistant commissioner of police (ACP, north) Davinder Chaudhary said that when they initiated investigation, they found that ASI Balwinder Ram, who was then posted as head constable in the Salem Tabri police station, had made an entry in the record to show that the case file had been sent to the court for further proceedings, but it never reached there.
After availing the opinion of district attorney (DA, legal), the Salem Tabri police registered an FIR against him under Section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) of the IPC.
A day ago, the court of additional sessions judge Amrinder Singh Shergill convicted ASI Balwinder Ram in connection with a corruption case and slapped four years of imprisonment. The Punjab Vigilance Bureau had arrested him on November 22, 2019 for corruption after he was caught red-handed while accepting ₹8,000 as bribe on the complaint of Sarabjit Singh of Partap Nagar. He was then posted at the Division number 6 police station in Ludhiana.
Sarabjit Singh had stated that filed a complaint against his neighbour for threatening him over water accumulation. To act on his complaint, the ASI demanded ₹10,000. The complainant had allegedly already given ₹2,000 in advance to the ASI. On November 22, 2019, as the accused accepted the rest of the bribe money, the Vigilance Bureau arrested him red-handed. Now, the court has convicted him in that case.
ASI Balwinder Ram is not the first cop to have faced such cases. On November 26, two police officials, including a retired assistant sub-inspector, were charged with criminal breach of trust after an inquiry exposed “negligence” in handling case files. The accused, ASI Sandeep Kumar (currently serving as Nayab Court) and retired ASI Bhupinder Singh, were booked under Section 409 of the IPC by the Focal Point police station.
The inquiry, led by the additional deputy commissioner of police (City 4), uncovered serious lapses in the submission of chargesheets for two cases dating back to 2014 and 2015. Both incidents involved theft, with FIRs registered under relevant sections of the IPC.
