The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday sought response from the Punjab government on a plea from the mother of Ranjit Singh, killed in an encounter in Gurdaspur on February 25, demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe.
The petition was taken up by the bench of justice JS Bedi after a special request from her lawyers for urgent hearing. The bench issued a notice of motion seeking a government response by May 25. In the plea, Ranjit’s mother Sukhjinder Kaur also sought directions to constitute a special investigation team (SIT) under the supervision of a sitting or retired judge, having all judicial members.
“..there exists strong apprehension that the deceased died during illegal custodial interrogation; or the alleged encounter was staged to justify the death by fabricating a narrative of self-defence. It was fabricated just to establish a chain of incidences to make the whole suspense-drama film story into real incidents,” says the plea.
The plea claims that the whole story of police as per the versions of all three FIRs registered in the controversy creates “profound doubts on the working of police and the way of handling such sensitive cases”.
It further alleges that police and persons of high hegemony within the administration of government are continuously pressurizing and suppressing the family of deceased to settle the things in peaceful manner according to their “Whims and fancies” and also threatening the family of deceased to not go for any further inquiry or court proceedings.
The petition demanded that police be directed to preserve and seal all internal and external CCTV footage of police stations Dorangla, Behrampur, Kalanaur, Purana Shalla, CIA staff/ police station, respectively, between February 20 and February 28 and seize the same for fair investigation in future. It further demanded to preserve the documents/record prepared by the police officials concerned while arresting the deceased and related to the entire case, on the pretext of which deceased and other accused were entangled in this case.
