Complete witness examination within three months: HC to Kapurthala court
CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court has given three months to Kapurthala district court to record statements of witnesses in the murder case of gangster Sukhvir Singh alias Sukha Kahlon Pehlwan, who was gunned down in January 2015.
Seeking a status report from the trial court by December 20, the bench of justice Kuldip Singh made it clear that if the police failed to produce the witnesses, the Kapurthala senior superintendent of police will be held personally responsible. The court was hearing the bail plea of one of the accused, Gurjeet Singh alias Sonu Baba.
Sukha Kahlon was gunned down by at least 15 unidentified assailants — who even filmed the act and danced around the body in front of the policemen — in Phagwara on January 22, 2015, when six cops were taking him back to the Nabha jail in a jeep after a court hearing in Jalandhar.
The assailants, reportedly belonging to a rival gang, in two white Toyota Fortuner SUVs intercepted the police vehicle outside a private school in full public view on the GT Road around 4.30pm. With their faces covered, they got the policemen and another prisoner to get off before pumping around 20 bullets into Kahlon’s body; and drove away without harming the cops or the other prisoner.
In the challan filed around three years back, five of the accused in the case were declared proclaimed offender. Earlier this year, one more accused was arrested and a supplementary challan was filed. “Every time the trial proceeds, one of the proclaimed offenders is arrested and the trial starts afresh,” the court observed, directing that in future, when a co-accused is arrested and supplementary challan is presented, it will be tried separately and not tagged with the current case.
“Trial is going on since then at a snail’s pace as coming out from the report of Kapurthala additional sessions judge, because accused are in various jails and are many times not produced by the jail authorities,” the court said, adding that from November 30, all the accused coming from outside jail, will be lodged at Central Jail, Kapurthala, till December 22 to ensure speedy trial.
The court also gave a timeframe to record evidence of various witnesses in the case.