Chadha Jr suicide: Brother, principal among 9 arrested
Inderpreet killed himself days after his father’s video with the principal led to a case of sexual harassment
AMRITSAR :The special investigation team (SIT) of the Punjab Police constituted to probe the high-profile suicide of ousted Chief Khalsa Diwan president Charanjit Singh Chadha’s son Inderpreet Singh Chadha on Tuesday arrested nine persons, including the victim’s younger brother and a woman principal.
Inderpreet (52), the elder son of Charanjit, was also removed as vice-president of the 115year-old Sikh charitable organisation after he was accused of criminal intimidation by the woman principal of one of the schools the charity ran after an objectionable video of his father with her went viral.
The principal had accused Charanjit Chadha of sexually harassing her. Upset over the video row and the accusations made by the woman principal, he committed suicide on January 3 with his licensed weapon in his SUV on Ajnala road in the city.
The woman principal had lodged a complaint with the Punjab director general of police (DGP) against the fatherson duo after the video surfaced on December 26 last year. A case was registered against the two at the Islamabad police station two days later.
Besides the principal and Inderpreet’s younger brother Harjit Singh Chadha, the other arrested accused are Gursewak Singh, Surjit Singh, Vijay Umat, Inderpreet Singh Anand, Varundeep Singh, Davinder Sandhu and Kuljit Kaur, said Amritsar additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP-2) Lakhbir Singh.
He said they were arrested after they appeared before the SIT in Chandigarh for questioning.
On December 30, a local court had granted four-day interim bail to Inderpreet.
A case was registered on January 4 on the statement of Inderpreet’s son Prabhpreet Singh under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) and 120-B (punishment for criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
Inderpreet had also left a 14-page suicide note, besides other letters written to his mother, the Punjab chief minister and his friend.
But Harjit was not named in the initial FIR. In the suicide note, Inderpreet had also
blame₹d Harjit but insisted that no action be taken against him since “we are born to the same mother”.
On January 5, the Amritsar police had handed over the probe into the cases involving the video row and Inderpreet’s suicide to the SIT headed by IG (Crime) LK Yadav in Chandigarh. Asked why they took long to arrest the accused, Yadav said the case needed to be investigated thoroughly. “The investigation is still on,” he said.