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CBI to court: Police registering false cases
against witnesses
KHALRA CASE: Key witness acquitted of
rape charges
WSN Network
PATIALA: Shame came in a liberal dose
for the Punjab Police with an investigating CBI senior officer of
the rank of DIG officially informing an Indian court that false
cases were being registered against witnesses in the Khalra kidnap
and rape case.
Kirpal Singh Randhawa, the key witness in the Sardar Jaswant Singh
Khalra kidnap and murder case, was acquitted of trumped up charges
of rape by a district and sessions judge. Punjab Police, which has a
history of browbeating witnesses or torturing them, had used the
strategem of embroiling Kirpal Singh in false cases. It had
registered a case under Section 376 of the IPC against Randhawa in
July 2003 when he was in the process of recording his statement in a
local court in the case. Six police officials, including a DSP, were
convicted in 2005 for the abduction and murder of human rights
activist Jaswant Singh Khalra in Amritsar in September 1995.
Randhawa was a neighbour of Khalra and was also a human rights
activist. He was a witness to the kidnapping.
Defence counsel Brijinder Singh Sodhi provided evidence that the
rape case was a frame-up to threaten Randhawa against deposing in
the murder case. CBI DIG M. Narayanan, who supervised the case, told
the court that fake cases were being registered against key
witnesses in the Khalra case. This, Sodhi said, proved to be
important in the rape case trial. Copies of a letter from Narayanan
to the then Punjab DGP highlighting the fake cases were presented in
the court. Randhawa is the vice-chairman of the Punjab Human Rights
Organisation headed by Justice Ajit Singh Bains.
Khalra had found that nearly 2,500 youth were killed in fake
encounters in Punjab during terrorism and filed a petition in the
Supreme Court, which asked the CBI to investigate the matter.
26 December, 2007
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