Wanted in rape case, suspended SP gives up

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, April 20

Suspended SP Salwinder Singh, who had been recently declared a proclaimed offender (PO) in a rape case, surrendered in a local court today.

The SP, escorted by an advocate, walked into the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohit Bansal in the afternoon. He was remanded in judicial custody till May 5. City police station SHO Vishwa Nath, who was standing outside the court room with a police force, took him to the Central Jail.

However, the local prison authorities refused to lodge him here, following which he was shifted to the Amritsar jail by the police. A senior jail official, who did not wish to be quoted, said the prison staff here feared that the officer may be attacked by some inmates having enmity with him. Salwinder had served as the SP (headquarters) before he was transferred to the PAP, Jalandhar, after the Pathankot airbase attack. The Punjab and Haryana High Court had rejected Salwinder’s bail application on September 23 last year.

He surrendered in a case registered against him under Section 376 (2) (public servant taking advantage of his official position to rape a woman) of the IPC. He was booked on August 3 last year after the victim’s husband had approached the then CM Parkash Singh Badal. An offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act was also made out after the husband complained that the SP sought money to hush up a case.

The SP was also booked under Section 354 of the IPC on October 20 last year after senior IPS officer Gurpreet Kaur Deo probed the allegations of sexual assault, levelled by Gurdaspur-based women police employees.

The officer had been allegedly abducted by a group of militants on December 31, 2015, two days before the terror attack on the Pathankot Air Force station. After an interrogation and a polygraph test, the NIA had given him the clean chit.