Stepson held for murdering farmer; second wife among three at large

The police claimed to have solved a blind murder of a farmer, Harjinder Singh, of Jandi village in the Sidhwan Bet area of Ludhiana district whose body was found lying in a pool of blood at his house on Wednesday afternoon.

While the key suspect, identified as Jaskaran Singh, victim’s stepson, was arrested within hours on Wednesday, the investigating officials, supervised by SSP Ludhiana (Rural) Ankur Gupta and SP (D) Rajan Sharma, are searching for the three other suspects.

The police said Jaskaran, the prime suspect, was the son of the second wife of Harjinder Singh while other suspects included his (Jaskaran’s) mother, deceased’s servant and another villager.

Kuljinder Singh, a nephew of the deceased, had informed the police on Wednesday afternoon that some unidentified persons had killed Harjinder when he was alone at home.

Preliminary investigations revealed that he had married another woman 22 years after his wife’s death and the second wife’s son had also started staying with the couple. After the deceased’s son from the first wife had shifted to a foreign country, the second wife and her son started harassing him for dividing the property.

Though the police are yet to ascertain the sequence of events, preliminary investigations revealed that the key suspect and his mother had conspired to get Harjinder eliminated by someone and pretended themselves to be staying separately.

“Having identified Jaskaran on the basis of circumstantial evidence, we arrested him on Wednesday and obtained information about other suspects,” said SP (D) Rajan Sharma, claiming that separate teams had been dispatched to arrest the three remaining suspects.