Fatehgarh Sahib murders: Case file to be used to train IPS officers

FATEHGARH SAHIB: The general assumption that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is more efficient than state police forces proved wrong in the case of Khushwinder Singh, a Fatehgarh Sahib man who was sentenced to death on Tuesday by the special CBI court in Mohali in a murder case.

The CBI had failed to solve the murder case of four members of a family who had gone missing in 2004, after six years of investigations and filed the closure report, but the Punjab Police cracked the case thereafter.

In June 2004, Khushwinder had killed Kulwant Singh, 40, his wife Harjit Kaur, 38, their daughter Ramandeep, 16, and son Arvinder, 14, by pushing then into a canal. In 2006, the case was handed over to the CBI, which though quizzed many family members and relatives of deceased, but failed to crack it till 2012.

The CBI then filed a closure report in the case, which later turned to be a murder case.

“Sometimes it takes decades to crack a blind murder case, as it is assumed that the criminal may attempt another such act. That’s what happened in this case,” said Patiala senior superintendent of police (SSP) Mandeep Singh Sidhu, who had cracked the case when he was posted as SSP, Fatehgarh Sahib.

He said after killing Kulwant’s family, the accused committed another such crime in which he eliminated six relatives of his wife by throwing them in Sirhind canal.

Khushwinder committed the crime to grab the wealth of Gurmel Singh, a relative of his wife. He killed Gurmel, 65, his wife Paramjit, 60, son Gurinder, 33, son-in-law Rupinder Singh, 36, and grandchildren Jaskirat, 6, and Simarpreet, 4.

Promising them ‘moksha’, he had taken them to the canal, wherein he drowned them when they were praying with closed eyes, on Khushwinder’ instructions.

Luckily, Jasmin, 35, another family member who was pushed into the canal, survived as she caught hold of an iron rod of a pillar in the canal.

She later narrated the entire story to the police, which nabbed the accused.

“During interrogation, when the accused claimed that he is a tantrik, I suspected that he must be involved in other similar acts, as he had killed the family members for ₹21 lakh the family possessed. I got curious called for files of similar incidents from across the state and found that the murder case of Kulwant Singh’s family was quite similar to it, as he had sold their land before the murder. Initially, he didn’t give in, but on sustained interrogation, he confessed,” said SSP Sidhu.

He said that as the case was earlier handled by the CBI, he called the bureau’s investigating officer and handed over the evidence to him. The CBI later produced a chargesheet in the case.

The SSP police said senior officials from the Police Academy, Phillaur, have sought the detailed summary of the case, so that it could be taught as a case study to new IPS and PPS officers joining the Punjab Police.

CBI FAILED TO SOLVE THE MURDER CASE OF FOUR MEMBERS OF A FAMILY WHO HAD GONE MISSING IN 2004 ,PUNJAB POLICE, HOWEVER, CRACKED THE CASE