Zaidi concealed facts about Suraj’s death: CBI court

Alka Malik, Special Judge, CBI Court, Chandigarh, in the order of sentencing eight accused for life imprisonment in custodial death case of Kotkhai said day after the death of Suraj Singh in custody, head of SIT IGP Zahur H Zaidi, visited Police Station, Kotkhai, on July 19, 2017 to conduct the fact-finding enquiry and also examined constable Dinesh about the incident.

In the detailed order made available on Tuesday, the court said that constable Dinesh was on sentry duty on the night when the victim died.

Zaidi recorded the statement of Dinesh in his mobile phone who narrated the entire sequence of events leading to death of Suraj Singh to him.

After recording the version of constable Dinesh in his mobile Zaidi, instead of taking action against the erring police officials, reprimanded constable Dinesh.

The court said that the transcript of interview of Dinesh as well as audio recordings heard by this court clearly reveal that Dinesh has disclosed the true facts to Zaidi at the time of his interview.

Dinesh has nowhere told Zaidi in his interview that Suraj Singh had died due to scuffle with another arrested person in the lockup, rather has disclosed to him that he was taken upstairs for interrogation and was brought unconscious from there.

Non-disclosure of this vital information by Zaidi to Prosecution Witness 41 (DGP) clearly points towards his involvement in the conspiracy and also establishes that he and other accused had, in fact, conspired to extract confession from the arrested persons in Gudiya rape and murder case for which they have resorted to custodial torture.

When one of them namely Suraj Singh succumbed to injuries of custodial torture, they all again conspired to conceal the real facts and to manipulate the records.

The court says that post mortem reports establish that the death of Suraj Singh was due to physical torture and not due to scuffle with accused Rajinder as mentioned in the FIR. The court also observed in the order that from the facts and evidence brought on record by the prosecution, it has been established that there was a lot of pressure on the police of Himachal Pradesh to arrest the culprits of Gudiya rape and murder case.

Therefore, they have resorted to pick up the suspects and interrogate them. During this interrogation, they have also resorted to beatings and tortures.

At the time of press conference convened at 4.30 pm on July 13, 2017, Zaidi has declared that five persons have been arrested on the basis of scientific evidence. However, no scientific evidence has been brought before this court to establish this fact.

Rather, the entire prosecution evidence is pointing towards one fact only that the accused police personnel had resorted to third degree torture and beating to justify arrest of five persons on July 13, 2017. Since it was so declared by head of SIT in the press conference, the accused persons have conspired to extract confession from the arrested persons. The court observed that the criminal conspiracy to commit the crime is very clearly established in this case.

The CBI Court has sentenced IGP Zaidi, DSP Manoj Joshi, SI Rajinder Singh, ASI Deep Chand Sharma, Mohan Lal, Surat Singh, Head Constable Rafee Mohammad, and constable Ranjeet Steta for life imprisonment in the case on Monday.