2015 Punjab police firing: STF makes second crucial arrest

Chandigarh, June 17 (IANS) In a major breakthrough in the 2015 Behbal Kalan police firing, the Punjab Police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) made its second arrest – a man who allegedly fabricated evidence and connived with the guilty police officer, then Moga SSP Charanjit Singh Sharma.

Sharma was arrested earlier and charge sheeted in the case, but is currently out on interim bail given by the high court on health grounds.

Giving details of the second arrest, Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, chief investigating officer of the SIT, said the accused, Suhail Singh Brar, a Faridkot resident, had been produced before a court and sent to four days of police custody.

Initial investigations showed that it was at the residence of Brar, a close confidant of Sharma, that the entire self-defence conspiracy of Sharma and other police officials of that time was executed.

Brar allegedly facilitated the police officials by providing them his residential premises and his 12 bore gun to fire shots on the pilot Gypsy of Sharma, who had claimed that it was after the vehicle was fired at by a mob of protestors that the police retaliated.

As per the SIT investigations, when the firing took place in Behbal Kalan on October 14, 2015 on protestors siting peacefully on dharna after a series of incidents of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib at Bargari and other places, the police team responsible for the firing hatched a conspiracy theory of self-defence.

They fabricated evidence by creating fake bullet marks on the pilot Gypsy of then Moga SSP, Sharma, to support their self-defence theory.

However, Sharma’s driver Gurnam Singh, who was driving the escort vehicle, has confirmed that no shot was fired on him.

Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh said with Brar’s arrest had unraveled a major link in the chain of events in the Behbal Kalan case, and further investigations were expected to unravel more aspects of the conspiracy.

Meanwhile, investigations are also continuing in the Kotkapura firing case, in which three charge sheets have been filed in the court of Faridkot against six persons, including then MLA Mantar Brar, IG Paramraj Singh Umaranangal, SSP Charanjit Singh Sharma and three others.

The SIT was constituted in February this year to ensure a fair and impartial probe into the Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura firing cases after the CBI’s failure to complete the probe.

–IANS

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