‘PHOREN’ DREAMS: MAN FAKES SUICIDE
How can suicide help you fund your foreign dreams? Manpreet Singh of Punjab’s Faridkot district had it all worked out, until he was busted on Tuesday.
FARIDKOT YOUTH FAKES SUICIDE; KIN EXTORT MONEY FROM THREE MEN BOOKED FOR ABETMENT; WANTED TO FUND KUWAIT SHIFT
How can suicide help you fund your dreams to go abroad? Manpreet Singh, 23, of Punjab’s Faridkot district had it all worked out, right until Tuesday, the day of his ‘bhog’ or memorial prayers for the departed soul. But, well, it proved to be the ‘bhog’ of his plan too, because his soul hasn’t yet departed, and he has been arrested alive, police revealed.
In an alleged conspiracy, Rashpal Singh, the father of this man from Chehal village of Kotkapura subdivision, told the police that he had “jumped into a canal” on July 3, five days after he’d been “physically and mentally tortured” by three villagers.
The three men were duly booked under section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The “body”, since it was “in a canal”, could not be recovered.
The family then offered a deal to the three accused — Mandeep Singh, Gursewak Singh and Harjit Singh — that they would take back the case in lieu of money, police said.
The money was meant to fund Manpreet’s plans to shift to Kuwait for work. The accused, sources said, had paid Rs 2 lakh to the family, who demanded Rs 4 lakh more.
In what now appears to be part of the plan, on June 28, when the three men allegedly thrashed Manpreet, urinated on him and used cuss words, he and his father informed the police about it. And then came the suicide, “because the police took no action”, the father had said.
On Tuesday, said station house officer KC Prashar, “We got a tip off that Manpreet is alive and hiding at a relative’s place in Moga. We conducted a raid and found him. He was planning to escape abroad. The family fooled everyone by conducting his death ceremonies!”
The police now plan get the suicide-abetment case quashed from a local court. “Police can’t quash the FIR, legally, so we will request the court to give a clean chit to all the three accused, as they were booked on the basis of a staged drama. A case of criminal conspiracy will be registered against Manpreet and his family after legal opinion,” said SHO Prashar.