Punjab ex-DGP Saini booked in 29-year-old kidnapping case

CHANDIGARH: Punjab Police have registered a case against their former chief Sumedh Singh Saini and seven others in connection with the disappearance of a Mohali resident after a terrorist attack here in 1991.

Saini was the Chandigarh senior superintendent of police at that time. Balwant Multani, who was a junior engineer with the Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Corporation, was allegedly picked up by police after the terrorist attack on Saini in which four cops in his security were killed. The case was registered against Saini and others under IPC Sections 364 (kidnapping or abduction in order to murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), 344 (wrongful confinement) and 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to exhort confession) at the Mataur police station in Mohali on Wednesday. The complaint had been filed by Balwant’s brother Palwinder Singh Multani, a resident of Jalandhar.

Hours after the case was registered, Saini was stopped by Himachal

Pradesh Police after he tried to enter the hill state at 4 am on Thursday without a curfew pass amid the COVID-19-induced lockdown. Former DGP Saini and others were in a car coming from the

Punjab side of the border, Bilaspur SP Devakar Sharma said. “On their insistence, after being stopped, the staff called the Naina Devi DSP who in turn called me and I directed him not to allow their entry into the state without a pass,” he said.

Saini has been in the crosshairs of the Capt Amarinder Singh-led Congress government since the sacrilege cases of 2015 surfaced. He had challenged the Vigilance Bureau’s closure report in the Ludhiana City Centre scam in which Amarinder was an accused.

A CBI probe was initiated in this case against Saini in 2007 on the directions of the Punjab and Haryana high court.

But it was quashed by the Supreme Court in 2011 after then SAD-BJP government filed a special leave petition terming the HC order against Saini as “biased”.

The apex court , while dismissing the plea against Saini, had said: “The path charted by the high court inevitably reflects a biased approach.”

“The SC, however, had given the family the liberty to go for fresh proceedings under CRPC section 482 ),” said a Punjab government spokesperson.

A fresh complaint was filed by the family against Saini on Tuesday, following which the police filed the FIR, he added.