Kotkapura firing: Supreme Court notice to ex-SHO on Punjab’s plea

New Delhi, November 8

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

The Punjab Government questioned the HC’s finding that “the then CM and Deputy CM could not have been said to be involved in a conspiracy on the basis of evidence of call records collected by the then SIT”. It argued that “the HC has, thus, given a clean chit to persons who were not even present before it”, terming the findings as “bad in law and liable to be set aside”.

The HC had on April 9 quashed the probe into the firing in which two men protesting 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 Pratap Singh. Thereafter, another SIT led by ADGP LK Yadav was formed in May to probe the incident. The order had come on a petition filed by Gurdeep Singh, the then Kotkapura 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. On Monday, an SC Bench asked the parties to respond to the state’s petition in four weeks after senior counsel Salman Khurshid and Aadil Boparai urged the court to expunge certain remark from the verdict as it virtually gave a clean chit to certain persons, creating hurdles in probe. — TNS