SIT probe ‘not enough’, CBI to dig deep

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, June 20

With the arrest of more than 10 dera followers in the past two weeks, the special investigation team (SIT) of the police claimed to have solved the three-year-old sacrilege incidents. However, during the sharing of the investigation with the Central Bureau of Investigation this week, the latter has found the probe ‘sloppy’.

To build a logically strong and convincing case for the conviction of the accused in the court, the CBI wants more detailed investigation in the case to fill up lacunae of the SIT investigation.

CBI sleuths are planning to scrutinise the three-year-old mobile phone call records of all ‘suspects’, starting 2015-2016 to lend more credence to the SIT story.

“The accused used fraudulently registered SIM cards or the new numbers registered in their name? The CBI wants to establish it by scrutinising the details of phone calls on these mobiles on the days before and after committing the crime, from June 1 to September, 2015,” said sources in the premier investigation agency.

“Recovery’ of a Sikh religious book by SIT from the shoe rack in the house of Mohinder Pal Bittu, the prime accused in the sacrilege incident, about a week after his arrest, the police emptying a drain in Kotkapura to search pages of a holy book three year after these were allegedly dumped in there and other ‘cracks’ in SIT’s investigation story show lack of credence in the investigation, said sources.

The CBI is planning to get the production warrants of all suspects, presently lodged in Faridkot Modern Jail, to question them.

Sources said after nominating these Sacha Sauda Dera followers in sacrilege incidents, SIT is also suspecting them to be the executors of the Maur Mandi blast case.

The blast took place on January 31, 2017, around 8.30 pm at the Maur Mandi’s main market where three persons were killed and 11 seriously injured. The blast took place in a Maruti car in which the IED was kept inside a pressure cooker.

While the police have failed to identify the accused in this case so far, suspecting the blast case was also a sequel to sacrilege incidents at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala and Bargari, the SIT is working on these lines.

Ranbir Singh Khatra, DIG, and head of SIT is non-committal on many chinks in the SIT probe and the arrested accused also being in line of ‘suspects’ in the Maur Mandi blast case. He declined to share any details of the investigation.

To scrutinise phone call records

• CBI sleuths are planning to scrutinise the three-year-old mobile phone call records of all ‘suspects’, starting 2015-2016 to lend more credence to the SIT story. 
• The CBI is planning to get the production warrants of all suspects, presently lodged in Faridkot Modern Jail, to question them.