Ludhiana Commissioner orders probe after shoe trader ‘wrongly identifies’ salesman as gangster

After the Ludhiana police had recently registered a case of murder conspiracy on a complaint of shoe trader Gurvinder Singh Prinkle, Commissioner of Police Swapan Sharma has ordered investigation, suspecting that the complaint was filed with a motive to get an FIR registered against his opponents.

Prinkle had alleged that gangster Lakhu Baba while acting as a client had come to his shop to kill him and CCTV footage had also been submitted to the police. An FIR had been lodged against a man after ‘identifying the accused’ in CCTV footage of a shoe shop in Sector 32 here.

In the FIR it had been alleged that Lakhu Baba went to his shop in his absence and threatened his staff with a pistol. Eight persons, including gangster Lakhu Baba of Jalandhar, and his associate Rishav Benipal, had been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Arms Act.

The FIR further alleged that Lakhu Baba acted on behalf of gangster Rishav Benipal, who had previously opened fire at his shop in September 2024. He also submitted CCTV footage of the “accused” and shared it online.

Upon viewing the video, Sachin of Bhattian Colony, a Ludhiana-based salesman, realised that he was the individual wrongly accused in the footage. In a video, he clarified that he had merely visited the shop to inquire about shoe prices and had no connections with any gangster. “I earn only ?500 a day working at a shop. I went there to check prices, found them costly and left. Later, I was shocked to learn that the police had booked me for murder conspiracy based on the CCTV footage. My children have started doubting me after watching the video. This humiliation is forcing me to think of taking some extreme step,” he stated.

Talking to The Tribune, CP Sharma said that since the complainant, who had earlier faced a murderous attack and had alleged in his complaint that some person had come to kill him, the police immediately registered an FIR. However, when the police launched an investigation and identified the person, it was found that Prinkle seemed to have lodged a fake complaint. “Now, DCP Investigation Harpal Singh will investigate the matter and if the complaint is found fake, then the registered FIR will be cancelled and a new case will be registered against Prinkle for misguiding the police,” he added.