Police denies being slow in probing stray-bullet injury cases

PK Jaiswar

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Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 20

While the city police is carrying out detailed investigations in the stray-bullet injury instance that occurred at the Golden Temple, injuring an SGPC task-force employee, Gurpreet Singh, it is apparently going slow in probing many other similar cases reported in the city in the recent past.

Police authorities were quick to call a forensic team from Chandigarh to investigate the stray-bullet injury case at Darbar Sahib. The team judged the trajectory and direction from where the bullet came and hit the task-force employee. The police immediately scrutinized the arms licences in order to zero in on the suspects who could have shot the fires. They have summoned the weapons to investigate from where the bullet was fired and were expecting to close in on the culprit soon.

But this did not happen in other cases. The city witnessed around four such instances near or on the Lohri festival.

On January 13, Sachin Kumar, a resident of the Viay Nagar area on Batala road, said he was flying kites on the roof of a factory when he was hit by something on the back of his head. He said he was taken to a private hospital where the doctors told him that a bullet had hit him.

The Mohkampura police registered a case while it sent the bullet to the Forensic Science Lab at Chandigarh to ascertain its calibre and bore. Jagjit Singh, SHO, Mohkampura police station, said the police was waiting for the forensic report. After receiving the report, they would look into such weapons in the area to ascertain who had fired at that time.

A similar incident happened in the Chheharta area. Harmanpreet Singh (15) of the Naraingarh area suffered a bullet injury on his knee on the evening of Lohri. His father Sulkhan Singh stated to the police that at around 9.40 pm on January 13, his son was standing outside his house and enjoying the bonfire when from nowhere a stray bullet hit his knee. He started bleeding profusely and was immediately taken to a private hospital.

Arun Sharma, SHO, Chheharta police station, said investigations were under progress as he had already deputed his men to prepare a list of persons having arms in the range of the bullet fired. He said they were visiting house to house to identify the person. Though, he added, a forensic team has not been approached till now.

Officialspeak

Though the investigations were taking time, it is not right to say that the police was sitting inactive. Officials are on the job and I hope they will crack the cases soon.

--Jatinder Singh Aulakh, Police Commissioner

Police Commissioner,