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Panchkula: Shoddy police probe helps murder accused walk free
The case dates back to February 9, 2017, when Diwan Chand, a former sarpanch of Ganeshpur Bhorian village, alerted the police about the murder of Rama Shankar, alias Ramu
Over six years after the murder of a man working at a tubewell in Surajpur, the case remains a mystery as a local court has acquitted the accused in view of shoddy police investigation.
The court of district and sessions judge Ved Parkash Sirohi, while acquitting Jagshir Singh, 30, hailing from Sangrur, on August 30, said, “The investigating officers of this case have conducted the investigation in a very casual manner and have left to collect so many evidence which could bring the culprit to book.”
The case dates back to February 9, 2017, when Diwan Chand, a former sarpanch of Ganeshpur Bhorian village, alerted the police about the murder of Rama Shankar, alias Ramu.
The accused and the victim worked at the dairy of Chand’s friend Gurmail Singh, a resident of Surajpur.
Chand had alleged that Jagshir, along with Rama and another worker, consumed liquor in Gurmail’s dairy situated in the fields at Surajpur village. During the drinking session, an altercation broke out between Jagshir and Rama.
As informed by Gurmail to Chand, Jagshir picked up a sword lying in the verandah and attacked Rama on the head, leaving him dead.
Police arrested Jagshir, who was present near Rama’s body, and booked him for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code at the Pinjore police station.
Police had recovered the sword used in the crime, along with a broken sword handle and a plastic bottle containing some liquor, from near the crime scene.
Goof-ups galore
In what the court termed as “a serious lapse” on the part of police, the investigating officer (IO) failed to take the accused’s clothes into possession to ascertain whether there was any blood of the deceased on them. “If the accused was involved in the occurrence, his clothes might have been stained with blood of the deceased during the scuffle,” the court pointed out.
Police also neither collected any sample of the accused’s hair to compare it with the hair recovered from the crime scene nor sent it to the Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Madhuban.
The IO did not collect fingerprints from the sword, handle of the sword and the liquor bottle. “The fingerprints...would have been of great significance to ascertain the culpability of the accused,” read the order.
Even as the police claimed that there was a third person present with the accused and the deceased, the IO neither tried to trace the said person nor disclosed his particulars.
“So, there are a number of lacunae in the prosecution case and serious lapses on the part of the IO. The IO has not even explained who was the third person present with the accused and the deceased on the date of occurrence. He has made no efforts to trace him and to make him part of the investigation. Such an important witness has been left to be joined in the investigation,” the court remarked.
