Amritsar woman kills self during raid, family blames it on police

PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service 

Amritsar, June 9

Charanjit Kaur (50) committed suicide after police teams from Beas and Mehta police stations, looking for her son Jodhbir Singh (28) in a robbery case, raided their house in Ghaziwal village in Beas late Friday night. 

  The police wanted to interrogate Jodhbir in connection with a Rs 2.5 lakh robbery at a brick-kiln in Kammoke village a day earlier. Family members alleged they tried to take away Jodhbir’s wife and their five-year-old son Abhinoor to pressure Jodhbir to turn himself in. With the menfolk out, Charanjit Kaur resisted the police and threatened to consume pesticide. But the police paid no heed and she took the extreme step.

“The cops fled without caring to take her to hospital,” said Swarn Singh, Jodhbir's younger brother, adding it were the neighbours who took his mother to hospital, where she died. 

Balkar Singh, a relative of the deceased, blaming “police highhandedness”, pointed out that Jodhbir did not have a criminal record. The family members refused to cremate the body, demanding that action be initiated against the cops. They relented only after Baba Bakala MLA Santokh Singh Bhalaipur intervened. 

Parampal Singh, SSP, refuted the charges. He said “the police arrested two persons — Paramjit Singh and Kuljit Singh  — in connection with a robbery in Kammoke village, who, in the course of interrogation, named Jodhbir. The police teams were, hence, sent to arrest him.”

On why no police woman had accompanied the team, he said they had gone to arrest Jodhbir and “not any woman”.  

However, advocate Sarabjit Singh, associated with the Punjab Human Rights Organisation, said as per the rules, the police needed to take along a respected person of the area and have a police woman in its team while raiding a residence.