CBI court convicts 6 cops in Patiala

CBI court convicts 6 cops in Patiala

Ajay Sura TNN 

Patiala:A special CBI court in Patiala on Monday convicted and sentenced six Punjab police personnel, including IPS officer Preetpal Singh Virk, in a20-year-old case of the abduction of a man—brother of a suspected Khalistani militant. 
    While holding the cops guilty, special CBI judge Hemant Gopal sentenced SSP Virk to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment along with three other cops—Shamsher Singh, Avtar Singh and Balbir Singh. Two other cops — Rajinder Singh Sohal, who is presently posted as DSP (city), Mohali, and Ganda Singh — were awarded three years in jail. 
    The court held the six cops guilty under sections 364, 365 (abduction), 342, 343, 346 (wrongful confinement) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. All the cops were immediately taken into custody by the CBI and sent to Central Jail Patiala. 
    The CBI had registered a case against Virk and five other cops in 1993 for picking up Tejinder Singh alias Billu, who was the brother of Jagdeep Singh alias Pilli, a suspected Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) militant. The police at that time had suspected that Jagdeep Singh had a hand in the kidnapping of Romanian diplomat Liviu Radu from Delhi in October, 1991. A month later, Radu was released unharmed. 
    According to the prosecution, Tejinder Singh was picked up from Kolkata by Virk, who was an SP at that time, and five other cops, as a pressure tactic to force his brother Jagdeep into giving himself up. Tejinder Singh was not seen again and is presumed dead. 
    The CBI had registered a case after Tejinder’s father Budh Singh in a habeas corpus petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 1993 had said that the Punjab police cops had taken his son into their custody. After seven years, the CBI in 2000 had filed achargesheet against the cops before the special CBI court in Patiala.