Punjab IPS officer may have done a Rathore

Ashish Kumar, a Delhi-based businessman who has been fighting a case of abduction and murder against an influential Punjab IPS officer, has alleged that the officer has inflicted pain and harassment on his family, much as in the Ruchika Girhotra case.

The officer involved is Sumedh Singh Saini, a serving additional
director general of police (vigilance), and he has been accused of having a hand in the disappearance of three members of Ashish Kumar’s family.

A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Delhi has framed charges against Saini under sections 342, 343, 364, and 120B of the Indian Penal Code which deal with kidnapping, wrongful confinement and criminal conspiracy.

A judge of the Punjab & Haryana high court, VK Jhanji, who heard the case before it was dispatched to a CBI court in Delhi, had said in his judgement dated December 22, 1995, that attempts were made to intimidate him while hearing the case. One anonymous caller even threatened to pick him up and throw him into a furnace “like the three along with their car and scooter”. The reference was to Ashish Kumar’s brother, brother-in-law and the driver.

The original case dates back to 1994 when Saini was posted as the senior superintendent of police, Ludhiana. He was initially accused of harassing and tormenting the family of Rattan Singh Walia which had some business dealings with close relatives of Saini.

The police picked up Rattan Singh’s son Ashish Kumar on February 24, 1994, on flimsy grounds and kept him behind bars for several days. When his brother Vinod Kumar initiated legal action to get him out on bail, he too was intimidated by the police. Rattan Singh died of a heart attack on March 5, 1994. Four days later, on March 3, 1994, the police, allegedly under instructions from Saini, picked up all the male members of the Walia family from their residence in Ludhiana and tortured them.

On March 15, 1994, they again picked up Vinod Kumar, his brother-in-law Ashok Kumar and driver Mukhtiar Singh and till date they have never been seen again. Ashish Kumar alleges that the three were on their way to Ludhiana from Chandigarh. “They never returned home and Saini got them murdered,” he alleges.

When the local police failed to trace his family members, Ashish Kumar filed an appeal in the Punjab and Haryana high court seeking a probe by an outside agency. The high court directed the district and sessions judge, Ambala, to file a report in the matter. But when even the Haryana court failed to act, the high court handed over the case to the CBI on August 25, 1995.

In the meantime, Saini used his influence to stall the proceedings against him, alleges Ashish Kumar. The CBI took five long years to file a challan (initiation of criminal proceedings) against Saini in December, 2000, and took another six years to finally frame charges against Saini in a CBI special court in Delhi on December 6, 2006.

During the next three years, the court proceedings were so slow that the statement of only one witness, that of Vinod’s mother Amar Kaur, has been recorded.

While the 93-year-old lady has been fighting to seek justice for the slain members of her family for the last 16 years, Saini has been rewarded with three promotions to become additional DGP and head of the Punjab Vigilance Bureau.