High court seeks fresh report from SIT

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Tuesday sought a fresh status report from the special investigation team (SIT) scrutinising FIRs related to a February 2016 Jat quota violence.

The matter will be taken up now on August 13.

The request for the status report was made by senior advocate Anupam Gupta, who is amicus curaie in this matter, during the brief hearing on Tuesday.

The latest report was filed by SIT on January 15, 2019, which revealed that SIT could not make any major breakthrough in 1,105 FIRs registered in Rohtak. The SIT is headed by inspector general of police (IGP) Amitabh Singh Dhillon.

A total of 2,105 FIRs were registered by the Haryana Police across the state after February 2016 Jat quota violence in which at least 30 persons had died and property worth thousands of crores was damaged. The SIT was constituted on December 4, 2017 to scrutinise 1,105 FIRs, including 921 cases in which untraced reports were prepared but not filed, and 184 cases which were still under investigation.

The scrutiny was ordered after Gupta had questioned the police for “half-hearted” approach in investigation.