Complainant alleges threat, HC seeks DGP’S response

CHANDIGARH : The Punjab and Haryana high court has sought a personal affidavit from the Chandigarh director general of police (DGP) in an alleged false drug case instituted by the Chandigarh Police against a witness in graft case involving suspended SHO Jaswinder Kaur and other cops.

The high court bench of justice Sudhir Mittal acted on the plea of Prem Singh Bisht and Samdarsh Kumar, who had approached the court seeking that the probe be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The FIR was registered under various sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act against Kumar at the Sector 39 police station on June 19.

As per them, while Bisht is the complainant in the graft case, Kumar claims to have witnessed sub-inspector (SI) Mohan Singh of Sector 31 police station demanding ₹ 9 lakh from Bisht to withdraw names of his employees from an attempt to murder FIR.

Bisht had alleged that the SI had told him that the Rs 8 lakh were for the then SHO, Jaswinder Kaur, and Rs 1 lakh for him.

After Bisht had approached CBI, the agency had laid a trap and arrested the SI while accepting Rs 2 lakh bribe in October 2017. Kaur has not been named in this FIR.

However, in 2019, Bisht had filed a plea in a trial court to summon her as an accused.

They have alleged that both of them were receiving threats from Rajdeep Singh, an inspector and Sho-rank officer, and Kaur to turn hostile in the 2017 case.

They claimed that the June 2020 FIR against Kumar was a result of them not toeing the cops’ line. “Petitioners are being harassed and false case has been planted. Through this case life and liberty of the petitioners has been put to peril. The senior officials of Chandigarh Police are also aiding the accused and are involved in illegally pressurising the petitioners,” they stated, demanding transfer of case to CBI.

Kaur, recently suspended as Manimajra SHO, is again in the news in another graft case. She, along with a conduit, Bhagwan Singh, was booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act on June 29 on charges of seeking Rs 5 lakh bribe from a Manimajra resident, Gurdeep Singh for not lodging an FIR in a cheating case.

The high court, while seeking response from the CBI and Chandigarh Police by August 10, said the response should be accompanied by an affidavit of the director general of police.