CHANDIGARH: Chandigarh’s Director General of Police (DGP) Sagar Preet Hooda on Friday constituted a six-member special investigation team (SIT) to probe the alleged suicide by 2001-cadre Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of Haryana cadre Y. Puran Kumar on October 7.
A day earlier, the Chandigarh Police registered a first information report (FIR) with charges of abetment to suicide and provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, based on a “final note” by the IPS officer, who named Haryana DGP Shatrujeet Singh Kapur and Rohtak Superintendent of Police Narendra Bijarniya among 11 serving and retired officials for allegedly harassing him.
Earlier in the day on Friday, Kumar’s wife Amneet P Kumar, who is also a senior bureaucrat in the state, wrote to Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Kanwardeep Kaur, questioning “incomplete information” in the FIR and demanded it be corrected “to accurately reflect the names of all accused”.
She said “diluted sections of the SC/ST Act” have been added in the FIR and it needed to be amended.
Also, Haryana officials representing of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities, led by D. Suresh, Resident Commissioner posted in Delhi, met senior officials of the Chandigarh Police, seeking a fair and time-bound investigation into the case.
According to DGP Hooda’s orders, the SIT has been formed to investigate FIR registered under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The SIT will be headed by IGP Pushpendra Kumar, with SSP Kanwardeep Kaur, SP (City) K.M. Priyanka, DSP Charanjit Singh Virk, SDPO (South) Gurjit Kaur, and Inspector Jaiveer Singh Rana as members.
The SIT will collect evidence, examine witnesses, seek expert opinions, and prepare a final report in a time-bound manner. Interestingly, he did not mention the deadline for the SIT to submit its report. But the DGP’s directive emphasised that “the investigation must be prompt, impartial, and comprehensive, given the seriousness of the matter”.