COLONEL CHARGED WITH MURDER

A Chandigarh trial court charged Colonel Manveer Singh Bains with murder in a case of alleged road rage. Bains had allegedly beaten up a Sector 37 resident to death.

CHANDIGARH: A Chandigarh trial court charged an army colonel on Friday with murder in a 2017 road rage case.

Col Manvir Singh Bains was indicted under the Indian Penal Code’s Section 302 (murder) and Section 304(II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), though the police had only made out a case for the latter.

The colonel now faces a maximum sentence of a life term.

He “intentionally jolted, thrashed and slapped the deceased”, additional districts and sessions court judge Ashwani Kumar said while announcing the stricter charges. The trial will begin on March 1. The colonel is out on bail.

The alleged murder took place on August 2, 2017 when the accused and the victim — 38-year-old Parveen Yadav — had a heated argument on a road dividing Sectors 34 and 44.

The altercation led to fisticuffs, with Yadav suffering injuries from which he collapsed at the spot.

The colonel, posted at Western Command, Chandi Mandir, Panchkula, is a resident of Mohali.

The 48-year-old colonel was charged for murder in the first information report (FIR) but the charge was diluted in the challan since the post-mortem report indicated that victim’s death was natural.

The deceased family’s counsel Subhash Sagar argued that the FIR clearly mentioned that deceased Yadav was chased and it was the colonel who forced Yadav to stop the car.

Intention of murder was rather clear, he argued.

Bains’s lawyer Satinder Singh Narula argued that at best the accused could be charged with Section 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) of the IPC.

According to Narula, the allegation of assault was added later and there was nothing to show that the colonel knew that his actions would lead to Yadav’s death.

THE COLONEL, POSTED AT WESTERN COMMAND, CHANDI MANDIR, PANCHKULA, IS A RESIDENT OF MOHALI