E-Paper
Wife of Dera Sacha Sauda follower killed in Nabha jail moves HC seeking CBI probe
Dera follower’s wife alleges in her petition in high court that senior Punjab Police officers were involved in the conspiracy to murder her husband and that the case was not probed
Santosh Kumari, wife of Dera Sacha Sauda follower Mohinder Pal Singh Bittu, who was murdered in the Nabha jail, filed a petition in the Punjab and Haryana high court demanding an inquiry by the CBI, alleging that senior Punjab Police officers were involved in the conspiracy that was not probed by the investigation agencies.
Bittu, who was booked in the 2015 sacrilege cases and arrested three years later, was killed by two inmates Maninder Singh and Gursewak Singh, both serving life terms for murder, on June 22, 2019, with iron rods. On September 5 that year, the police had filed a chargesheet against four persons, including the attackers. Thereafter, the Patiala court framed charges against them and the trial which is under process.
Bittu’s wife has also sought stay on the trial proceedings pending before the additional sessions judge, Patiala, in the FIR number 101, which was registered after the murder.
She has also attached a 29-page note purportedly written by Bittu detailing his custodial torture by the police.
In her petition, she alleged that her husband was brutally killed in a wider conspiracy using judicial tools when he was lodged in the Nabha jail and the murder was committed in collusion between the police and politicians who were named by Bittu in the note.
The petitioner has made 21 persons party, including deputy chief minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and director general of police (DGP). She asked the HC to issue direction to the respondents to conduct further investigation as at whose behest her husband was murdered.
The note carries details of what happened during Bittu’s police custody from June 7 to 19, when was taken to different places. He alleged merciless beatings, mental torture, being given electric shocks by the cops besides removing his clothes.
He had named then crime investigation agency (CIA) in-charge inspector Lakhvir Singh, DSP Sulakhan Singh and SP(detective) Sohal, SI Iqbal Singh, inspector Dalvir Singh, ASI Harpreet Singh, then DIG (now retd) Ranbir Singh Khatra and then Moga SSP Rajjit Singh.
“The police officers mentioned in the note subjected my husband to third-degree torture methods to pressurise him to extract make him confess to his complicity in the sacrilege episode. He was falsely implicated in a case of the theft of bir (copy) of Guru Granth Sahib as part of a deep-rooted conspiracy due to political pressure,” she said.
Bittu had purportedly given his confessional statement in a Moga district court in 2018 after he was arrested in a 2011 violence case. “Since many senior police officers of the state are involved, it would be in the interest of justice that further investigation may be conducted by the CBI,” she said.
Bittu’s son Davinder Pal said the note by handed over to him when he went to meet his father in jail. “I submitted a copy of the note along with an application to the then Faridkot deputy commissioner in June 2019. The DC forwarded the application to the SSP for action but we have not heard anything in this matter sinc,” he added.
