Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday handed over Colonel Pushpinder Bath’s assault case to Chandigarh police, stating that no officer from the Punjab police cadre would be involved in the probe.
Acting on Col Bath’s petition seeking transfer of the assault case investigation to the CBI or an independent agency, the Bench of Justice Harpreet Singh Brar asked the state of Punjab to specify whether it wanted a consent-based order or one on merit.
The Bench also asked whether handing over the investigation to the Chandigarh police was acceptable before the order was passed.
Justice Brar ordered that the Chandigarh DGP would constitute a special investigation team (SIT) within a week and the SIT would complete the probe in four months’ time.
The detailed order is awaited.
The case was initially placed before Justice Sandeep Moudgil’s Bench who had on March 28 last, pulled up the Punjab police over the delay in the registration of the first information report (FIR) in Col Bath’s assault case. The state’s action against the accused cops by suspending them, also failed to convince the Bench of Justice Moudgil, who asserted that police is not obliging anyone by suspending the accused cops.
It may be recalled that Col Bath and his son were assaulted by a group of accused Punjab police personnel on the intervening night of March 13 and 14 when the two were having food at a roadside “dhaba’’ (eatery) near Government Rajindra Hospital in Patiala.
The accused cops – who were in civil dress and allegedly drunk but had come in their official police vehicles, rudely asked the army officer to move his car as they wanted to park theirs. They reportedly assaulted them when Col Bath objected to their rude tone. The entire incident was recorded in a CCTV camera installed at the “dhaba’’.
The police earlier allegedly refused to register an FIR and later allegedly attempted to hide the names of some cops. The case came to light after army officer’s wife addressed newspersons in Chandigarh and Patiala with CCTV footages and also the recording done by her in her phone showing some of the accused apologising for the assault stating “they did not know the person they beat up was an army officer’’.
It was after four days of the incident that the senior police officials also apologised and assured the army that they had suspended the erring cops – who included inspectors Harry Boparai, Ronnie Singh and Harjinder Dhillon, besides nine other personnel including their gunmen.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ’s editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
