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Sangrur college employee suicide: 3 officials charged with abetment
Not paid salary for three years, Devinder Verma, a clerk at an employee of the Baba Hira Singh Bhattal Institute of Engineering and Technology, ended his life in his office on Tuesday night
Two days after financial distress and lack of expenses in emergency corpus drove an employee of the Baba Hira Singh Bhattal Institute of Engineering and Technology to take his own life, a Punjab government establishment in Sangrur’s Lehragaga town, the police have booked three top officials of the cash-strapped college for abetment to suicide.
A case under IPC Sections 306 (abetment to suicide) and 34 (common intention) has been registered against college principal Satish Kansal, Sandeep Bajaj, registrar, and Madan Lal, an assistant registrar.
Not paid salary for three years, Devinder Verma, a clerk, ended his life in his office on Tuesday night.
He was not the only one who was in despair, 105 others
DSP Manoj Gorsi said the statement of family of the deceased had been recorded.
“The accused have been named in the FIR. But no arrest has been made so far,” the DSP said.
Upset over not being paid salary for 36 months, the accused had written a letter to Punjab government on January 14 in which he threatened to take his own life but the government officials did not take him seriously.
Kamal Garg, one of the employees, said for the past three years, the employees were either borrowing money or making any other arrangement to make ends meet.
“Even after Devinder’s death, the local administration is talking of paying us six-month salary only,” he said.
He added that the government is responsible for poor financial condition of the college as it was denied permission to go ahead with the admission process.
“At present, there are 80 students enrolled in diploma courses. They were admitted in 2021 after the government gave approval to run five diploma courses only,” Garg said.
In 2019, the state government decided to shut the college and shift the staff and students to other colleges, but the plan did not materialise.
According to a report prepared by a committee of the IK Gujral Punjab Technical University, Kapurthala, and Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University, Bathinda, the annual expenditure of the institute was ₹11 crore against an annual income of ₹1.94 crore, resulting in the deficit of around ₹9 crore.
Started as a government polytechnic in 1995, the institute was upgraded as an autonomous body named after freedom fighter Baba Hira Singh Bhattal, father of former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal.
