Jun
24
Illegal Detention & Custodial Death
June 24, 2005 | Comments Off on Illegal Detention & Custodial Death
On June 13, a warrant officer of the Punjab and Haryana High Court rescued a relative of Shamsher Singh, an accused in the assassination of Chief Minister Beant Singh, from illegal police custody:
The release followed an order by Mr Justice SN Aggarwal on a habeas corpus petition filed by Ms Charanjit Kaur, a sister of Mr Bhagwant Singh, under Article 226 of the Constitution. In his order, the Judge held that prima facie it appeared to be a case of illegal detention.
On June 24, angry residents of Kapurthala had a confrontation with the police over the alleged custodial death of a Dalit boy:
The agitated family members of deceased Ravi Pal and residents of Shtabgarh village pelted stones on the police while the latter retaliated by lathicharging and firing in the air. The residents alleged that the police had rounded him up in connection with the gruesome murder of a farm labourer early this month while he was returning home from Phillaur on Wednesday morning.
The angry mob had just started gathering near Sultanpur police station this morning with an aim at staging a dharna and lodge a protest. However, Gurmit Singh, SP (D), Mr Harpreet Mander, DSP (Sultanpur) and Mr Tarlochan Singh, SDM, reached the spot and tried to pacify the residents who then cremated the body of the youth at around 2 pm.
Crying inconsolably over the death of her son, Ms Gurmeet Kaur, mother, said her son was working with her uncle at Phillaur doing boring work for tubewells. “We received a message through sarpanch that he was called by the police for probe into the death of the 40-year old farm labourer. We called him up on Wednesday morning while he was in Phillaur and the said he would reach Lohian within an hour and somebody should be there to pick him up. But when his cousin had gone there to get him, he was nowhere to be seen,” she recalled.
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