5 yrs on, no headway in boy’s murder; family for CBI probe

PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 23

The failure of the police in cracking the brutal murder of nine-year-old Gurkirat Singh in Verka has forced the victim’s family to move Supreme Court, seeking a probe by the CBI or any independent agency. The apex court has issued a notice to the police, seeking report on the investigation so far.

The boy was murdered in November 2012 and the police investigations, since then, have hit dead ends. The family members are a dejected lot as their hopes of getting information about the killer and the motive behind the murder have been razed to the ground.

Earlier, the police had filed a closure report before the Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC), triggering the family to approach the apex court for justice. While disposing of the case, the HC had directed the police to reopen the case if it finds any clues in future.

Angrej Singh, father of the deceased, blamed the local police for its failure to identify and nab the suspects. “Ealier, the SITs constituted to crack the case had filed affidavits before the High Court that they were about to crack the case and arrest the suspects. But they have failed to solve the case till now. Their affidavits were only to mislead the court it appears,” said Angrej Singh.

“We named certain suspects in the case but the police teams did only formalities of questioning. They didn’t bother to interrogate all the suspects,” he said. The family had named several relatives with whom they had estranged relations.

Advocate Sarabjit Singh Verka, principal investigator, Punjab Human Rights Organisation, said, “The Gurkirat murder case is a perfect example of unprofessional and incompetence of the police. Ideally, it should have cordoned off the area and collected scientific evidence from the spot where the body was found. But the cops failed to do so and crucial evidence was destroyed due to movement of people. Secondly, whenever the HC asked the police for handing over the probe to the CBI, they claimed they were about to crack it.”

Several investigating teams draw a blank

Nine-year-old Gurkirat Singh, a resident of Verka, went missing from his house in November 2012 under mysterious circumstances. Later, his body was found dumped at a secluded place, a few metres away from his house. The motive behind the murder is not clear. Though the police formed several teams to crack the case, the probe hit a dead end every time. The police had even got the polygraph tests of three suspects done from the forensic science laboratory at Madhuban in Haryana but nothing came out. The investigation was even supervised by the then ADGP (Crime). The SIT was reconstituted in 2015 but it couldn’t bring results.