Trial court has no record of 1994 report police claimed to have filed, SIT tells Punjab and Haryana HC

Senior IPS officer Chattopadhyaya, the director general of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited, was in April 2019 appointed as chairman of the SIT, while ADGP Gurpreet Deo and ADGP B Chandra Sekhar are its other members. In July 1994, then SP(D) Ropar Paramraj Singh Umranangal – who is presently under suspension in a different matter — and his team had claimed to have killed a “dreaded terrorist”, Gurnam Singh Bandala, in an encounter in Morinda Kurali area. However, Bandala was found alive in 1998, after which the family of one Sukhpal Singh, 26, of Kala Afghana village in Gurdaspur claimed that Sukhpal was the one killed by Umranangal and his team.

In the status report filed before the High Court, the SIT has said Bandala was arrested in October 1998 and the FIR was registered in Gurdaspur. It further said that the FIR pertaining to the July 1994 encounter — in which Bandala was claimed to have been killed, is “intricately linked” with the investigation of the 2016 FIR pertaining to the disappearance of Sukhpal Singh. Both cases need to be investigated, the SIT has said in the report.

According to police records, as per the SIT status report, an untraced report was submitted in the 1994 FIR pertaining to the fake encounter in November 1994 and same was approved by the competent court in May 1995. However, the District and Sessions Court Roopnagar and the district Attorney have denied the existence of such an untraced report in their record rooms. Police on its end destroyed the record in September 2002.

“There is no such case pending in court and no such case is consigned to the Judicial Record Room pertaining to FIR no. 63 dated 27.7.199, Morinda police station, respectively,” the civil judge (senior division), Roopnagar, told the SIT. The district attorney also, in reply to the SIT, stated that the register had been checked and no such case had been found in the records.

The SIT in its status report said the reports from the court and district attorney’s office contradict the stand taken by local police. The Roopnagar Civil Hospital has also told the SIT that the record relevant to the case is not traceable.