Kotkapura firing: SC notice to Gurdeep Singh and others on Punjab’s plea

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 8

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to Gurdeep Singh and others on a petition filed by the Punjab Government challenging a Punjab and Haryana High Court’s verdict that virtually gave a clean chit to certain persons in the Kotkapura firing case.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court had on April 9 quashed the probe into the Kotkapura firing in which two men protesting against the sacrilege at Bargari village were killed in police firing on October 14, 2015. It had ordered reconstitution of the SIT without IPS officer Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh.

Thereafter, another SIT led by Additional DGP (Vigilance Bureau) LK Yadav was formed in May to probe the Kotkapura firing incident as the high court had quashed the chargesheet filed by Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh.

The High Court’s April 9 order had come on a petition filed by Gurdeep Singh – the then Kotkapura Station House Officer (SHO) — who was the complainant as well as investigating officer in the FIR lodged in 2015. He was made an accused in a subsequent FIR lodged in 2018 after the change in guard in the state.

On Monday, a Supreme Court Bench led by Justice Indira Banerjee asked the parties to respond to the state’s petition in four weeks after senior counsel Salman Khurshid and advocate Aadil Singh Boparai—representing the Punjab Government—urged the court to expunge certain remark from the HC’s verdict as it virtually gave a clean chit to certain persons, creating hurdles in the probe.