The high court bench of justice HS Brar ordered that the Chandigarh director general of police (DGP) would entrust the probe to an IPS officer, posted in UT and belonging to the AGMUT cadre, within a week. The officer would complete the probe in four months and submit report to the court concerned, it added.
In his petition filed on March 25, Colonel Bath had stated that he and his son were brutally attacked by four inspector-rank officers of Punjab Police and their armed subordinates, who snatched his identity card and mobile phone, and threatened him with a “fake encounter” over a parking dispute outside an eatery in Patiala on the intervening night of March 13 and 14.
The plea alleged that the colonel’s wife, Jasvinder Kaur, was pressured by the policemen to strike a compromise and claimed that some personnel admitted to her over a video call that they were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident.
Despite the petitioner and his family being the first ones to report the incident, the FIR was first registered on March 14 on the basis of the statement of the eatery owner and a fresh FIR was registered on the colonel’s statement on March 22. Hence, he had demanded that the matter be handed over to the CBI.
During the hearing on Thursday, both the parties agreed to hand over the probe to Chandigarh Police with petitioner’s counsel stating that the officer, who is entrusted with the probe should not be from Punjab.
In view of this, court said that petition is being disposed of and probe is being handed over to Chandigarh Police “without commenting anything further on the respective claims of the parties as well as on the merits of the case, lest it may prejudice the case of either of the party”.
After the hearing, Jasvinder Kaur said, “I am satisfied with decision of high court. We have already requested the honourable court to hand over the case either to any investigating agencies other than Punjab Police.The court has ordered to transfer the investigation to Chandigarh Police. Moreover, no Punjab Police cadre (on deputation to Chandigarh) will be part of the investigation.”
The case was heard on two occasions — March 25 and March 28 — by the bench of justice Sandeep Moudgil but for Thursday’s hearing, it was assigned to the bench of justice HS Brar.
During the two previous hearings, the bench of justice Moudgil had come down heavily on the Punjab government and questioned the police on the delay in registration of an FIR and non-arrest of the accused police personnel.
For Thursday’s hearing, justice Moudgil had also sought details of FIRs registered in Patiala between March 18 and March 20, as Punjab Police claimed that delay in registration of FIR was also attributable to heightened security in the district due to farmers’ protest, which they vacated from Khanauri and Shambhu border on March 19. It had questioned the police why the officers were not arrested and sought to know whether it would be sufficient to place the accused-police officials under suspension and to transfer four inspectors out of the bounds and jurisdiction of district police given the allegations they were facing. The government had specially appointed senior criminal lawyer RS Rai to represent it before the court.
