HC reserves order on petition against handwriting samples

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday reserved its order on a plea from an accused in a 2015 sacrilege case, against the special investigation team (SIT) taking the handwriting samples.

Last week, the high court had restrained the Punjab Police’s SIT probing the sacrilege cases from submitting chargesheet (challan) against the accused, Sukhjinder Singh, in a desecration incident wherein derogatory posters were pasted near the gurdwaras of Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala villages in Faridkot district on the intervening night of September 24 and 25 in 2015.

The HC bench of Justice HNS Gill reserved the order after it was apprised by the Punjab Police that the accused himself had agreed for handwriting samples before a court.

Earlier, the high court had acted on the plea of Sukhjinder Singh, alias Sunny, a Dera Sacha Sauda follower, who had demanded that the SIT be stopped from re-examining his handwriting samples for matching them with those on the posters. Sukhjinder had argued that the SIT is competent only to further investigate the matter and not reinvestigate it. Sukhjinder is among four accused in the case, besides Shakti Singh, Ranjit Singh and Baljeet Singh.

On June 1, the SIT collected samples of Sukhjinder to match them with the writing on the derogatory posters claiming that one of the posters was written by him. The SIT led by then DIG Ranbir Singh Khatra in 2018 had claimed that the handwriting of the accused dera followers had matched with the ones on the posters.

But the CBI said the samples of the accused did not match with the ones on the posters.