VK Jhanji wants special law for errant, criminal cops

Former Punjab and Haryana high court judge VK Jhanji, who was allegedly threatened by IPS officer Sumedh Singh Saini, is appalled at the elevation of the then Ludhiana senior superintendent of police (SSP) to the post of additional director general of police (vigilance), Punjab.

Saini was charge-sheeted by the CBI in 2000 for allegedly kidnapping and conspiring to kill Delhi businessman Ashish Kumar’s brother Vinod Kumar, brother-in-law Ashok Kumar and their driver Mukhtiar Singh in 1994.

When Jhanji, now a Supreme Court lawyer, was hearing the case in 1995, an anonymous caller had reportedly threatened to pick him up and throw him into a furnace “like the three (the Kumars and their driver)”.

Jhanji, who had directed the CBI to file the charge sheet within a month (by September 1995) against the “pompous” Saini for murder, abduction and criminal intent, found to his anguish that the government didn’t accord the sanction and allowed the investigating agency to prosecute him for some minor offences.

He told DNA, “After 14 years, the CBI moved the court seeking his [Saini’s] prosecution for minor offences. Where is the CBI report? It had found the involvement of the top cop in the grave offences.”

Expressing concern at media reports highlighting the dubious and criminal roles played by some senior IPS officers, including dishonoured former Haryana director general of police SPS Rathore, a perturbed Jhanji urged for a central law to deal with such errant cops.

“Some special law to exclusively handle cases against police officers must be enacted. It is needed urgently,” he said.

“It’s an irony that Saini has been promoted despite HC’s order based on a CBI probe finding him prima facie involved in serious offences such as murder and abduction.

“Once an order indicting a police officer is passed by a high court, he shouldn’t be allowed to stay in service. That kind of high sensitivity to the court’s dispensation is required,” Jhanji, who had been provided special protection at the behest of then Chief Justice of India (CJI) AM Ahmadi in 1995, said.

He recalled that after the ransacking of his courtroom by a group of Sikhs, he received disturbing information from none other than the then Punjab advocate general GK Chatrath that “I should be careful as there’s some danger to my life”.

Jhanji was then sitting with justice MS Liberhan of Ayodhya fame and Liberhan commission lawyer Anupam Gupta was then Saini’s counsel.

Saini was hell bent on getting a case filed by Vinod Kumar [Delhi businessman Ashish’s brother] demanding police protection dismissed. Kumar had alleged that because of a dispute with Saini and proprietors of M/s Saini Motors, who were closely related, he feared that he would be taken into police custody despite the high court’s orders to the contrary and beaten up or even liquidated if he entered Ludhiana without protection.

Kumar said his father had expired that day, March 5, 1994, but because of fear, he could not perform his last rites. He said his brother Ashish had been taken into custody on February 24, 1994, and implicated in a false case.

Jhanji sought to bring justice for Vinod Kumar, a fact Saini couldn’t swallow. He sent the details of the ugly incidents in his court to the CJI, who ordered police protection for him. “Now, I am an ordinary citizen and don’t have any protection,” said the bold Jhanji.

He rued that no case had been filed against Saini for the alleged abduction, illegal detention and suspected elimination of Vinod Kumar, Ashok Kumar and their driver Mukhtiar Singh, who went missing after the ugly incidents in his courtroom in 1995. This despite the CBI establishing that Saini, then superintendent of police SS Sandhu and then station house officers of Kotwali Police Station BC Tiwari and Paramjit Singh were responsible for the disappearance.