Sangrur officials: Difficult to identify those behind farm fires

Parvesh Sharma

Sangrur, November 17

The police have registered 30 FIRs during the past week for burning stubble in various parts of district, but all have been filed against unidentified persons. Police officers say it has been done to prevent harassment of innocent persons.

Need to go through revenue records

Cops face serious problems in identifying those who burn stubble on their fields due to various reasons. The police have to analyse bulky revenue record to catch the real culprits. A government officer

A majority of the FIRs have been registered on the complaints of police officers. In an FIR (No. 163) registered at the Dhuri police station, it is claimed that during patrolling Sub Inspector Karmjit Singh received a tip-off that some unidentified persons had set stubble on fire at Jahangir village. Later, the FIR was registered against an unidentified person.

Similarly the details of FIR number 91 registered at the Sherpur police station show that as per data received by the SHO from pollution control board, it has come to light that some residents of Barhi, Ramnagar Chhana and Tibba had burnt stubble in fields.

Now police face a tough challenge to identify the real culprits as many residents have given their land on annual lease while at some places, relatives cultivate the land, which mostly belongs to their NRI kin. Apart from this, division of the land has not been put on record, but family members have divided the land with their consent.

“Cops face serious problems in identifying the real culprits, who have burnt stubble on their fields due to various reasons. The police have to analyse bulky revenue record to catch the real culprits,” said a government officer.

Sangrur SSP Surendra Lamba said they had registered cases against unidentified persons to prevent harassment of innocent people. “Thorough investigations of each case will be conducted and real culprits will be named in each FIR,” he said.