Faridkot court disposes of Kotkapura firing case

NOW, A FRESH LEGAL PROCESS WOULD BE INITIATED AFTER FILING NEW CHARGESHEETS

FARIDKOT : With the Punjab and Haryana high court quashing all the chargesheets filed by the special investigation team (SIT) in the Kotkapura firing case, the trial court in Faridkot on Friday disposed of the first information report (FIR) registered on October 14, 2015, dropping the proceedings against the accused.

The court of Faridkot additional district and sessions judge Harbans Singh Lekhi consigned the case file to the record room. Now, a fresh legal process would be initiated after filing new chargesheets.

This comes three days after the trial court closed Kotkapura firing case in FIR-129 registered by the SIT in 2018 and dropped proceedings against seven accused, including six cops.

Suspended SP (then Kotkapura DSP) Baljit Singh and then Kotkapura station house officer (SHO) Gurdeep Singh Pandher were named as accused in the case.

On June 25, the SIT had arrested Pandher by adding sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) and 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc) of the Indian penal Code in FIR-192, which was registered on Pandher’s complaint, against the protesters.

On August 13, the SIT filed chargesheet against Pandher and Baljit.

Later, the case was committed to the court of sessions, by the court of Illaqa magistrate, Faridkot, on January 29.

The defence counsel on Friday moved an application for dropping the proceedings, citing quashing of the SIT’s chargesheets by the high court.

“The high court in an order on the petitions of the accused stated that the investigation conducted by respondent 3 (ex-IGP Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh) in case FIR-129 and FIR-192, both of Kotkapura city police station and the consequent chargesheets filed by him, have been quashed, and the investigation of the cases involved in the said petitions have been ordered to be conducted by an SIT of senior police officers, as mentioned in the order, to be constituted by the state government and to submit the final report of investigation to the concerned magistrate,” Lekhi stated.

“So, now in view of the order passed by the HC, the commitment order passed by the court of Illaqa magistrate, Faridkot, does not survive and this court has become functus officio and cannot proceed further to deal with this case. Therefore, the file of this case in FIR-192 is ordered to be sent to the court of Illaqa magistrate to deal with this case, as per the HC order. All the applications filed by the counsel for the accused, stand disposed of accordingly,” Lekhi added.