Framing of charges deferred to May 15

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, April 19

A local court on Thursday deferred to May 15 the framing of charges against Honeypreet and others in a case pertaining to violence by followers of the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda here.

The defence counsel on Thursday demanded a compact disc (CD), which is learnt to have recording of a telephonic conversation of several accused arrested in this case.

The prosecution counsel submitted that the transcript of the conversation was attached in the chargesheet. The defence counsel submitted that the CD be given to them before resuming the arguments so that they could check the relevance of the conversation from the original source, not from a transcript provided by the police.

Defence counsel SK Rohilla said besides CD, the supplementary chargesheet against seven persons arrested in the case recently had not been submitted to the session’s court yet.

A chargesheet was submitted in the Panchkula court on November 28 last year, mentioning the role of top dera functionaries, including Honeypreet.

Honeypreet Insan, Dilawar Singh, Dhan Singh, Surinder Dhiman, Chamkaur Singh, Rakesh Kumar, CP Arora, Sukhdeep Kaur, Pradeep Insan, Govind Insan, Gopal and Khairati Lal were charged with criminal conspiracy, waging war against the state and hiring or conniving to hire persons to join an unlawful assembly.

Besides them, Sharanjeet Kaur and her son Gurmeet Singh of Bathinda and Gurmeet Singh of Muktsar in Punjab have been charged with sheltering Honeypreet during her 38-day hiding before her arrest on October 4 last year.

According to the chargesheet, Honeypreet and Aditya Insan plotted the conspiracy during the meeting at the Sirsa dera on August 17 last year.