Ludhiana jail inmate dies at PGI

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, July 6

A 25-year-old inmate, lodged at the Central Jail, Ludhiana, for drug smuggling, died at the PGIMER, Chandigarh, under mysterious circumstances on Friday night.

Sunny Kumar was undergoing treatment at the PGI since July 3.

He was arrested by the Koom Kalan police in June this year with 25-gram drug powder along with his aide Joginder.

Meanwhile, the kin of the deceased accused the Koom Kalan police of thrashing him and said he was arrested on June 25 and since then, his health deteriorated. They demanded registration of case against the police officials who thrashed him.

Mahinderpal, grandfather of the deceased, said the Koom Kalan police nabbed his grandson on June 25 with drug powder. After his arrest, Sunny was beaten up in police custody. He said his grandson was a drug addict.

Deceased’s brother Harpreet said he had gone to meet his brother recently, who told him that the police had beaten him badly in custody and he was indicted in a fake case.

He demanded judicial probe in the case to ferret out the truth.

What the police have to say

Davinderpal Singh, SHO, Koom Kalan police station, said after Sunny was arrested by ASI Randhir Singh with drug powder on June 25, he was sent to jail the same day. Since the inmate was a drug addict and was also suffering from hepatitis C, he was admitted to the jail hospital. On July 3, his health deteriorated and he was rushed to the Civil Hospital, from where he was shifted to Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, which further referred him to PGI in Chandigarh, where he succumbed on Friday night. The SHO denied that Sunny was beaten up or given any third-degree torture at the police station and all allegations were false. He said Sunny was already suffering from a disease, due to which he was not well. He said the postmortem report would clear the exact cause of death.