Rs 20 lakh graft: Accused SP, DSP shifted out of Faridkot district

Faridkot, June 3

A day after the police booked a Superintendent of Police (SP), a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) and a Sub-Inspector (SI) and two others for allegedly receiving Rs 20 lakh in bribe in a murder case, both SP and the DSP have been shifted out of Faridkot district.

Harjit Singh, SSP, Faridkot, said both accused police officers, Gagnesh Kumar and Sushil Kumar, have been relieved from the Faridkot police.

Sources said the accused officers had been shifted to Pathankot and Ludhiana.

As the whereabouts of the third accused, SI Khem Chand Prashar are not known to the police since Friday afternoon, when a Vigilance Bureau (VB) team reached the district police headquarters to record statements of the accused, no decision about his transfer has been taken yet.

The three police officers have been booked under various sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act after an investigation by the three-member VB team, headed by an IGP rank officer, indicted them for allegedly receiving the bribe. The move not to arrest the officers on Friday after the registration of the FIR has raised many doubts.

While SSP Harjit Singh said the investigation was underway, sources said the police were under pressure of a senior officer for not taking any prompt action with the arrest of the accused.

The complainant in the case alleged that the accused had received Rs 20 lakh from him on behalf of a senior police officer.

One of the accused, SI Khem Chand Prashar, was earlier dismissed from the police service in September 2019 after he was booked for extorting 2 kg of gold from a man and keeping him in illegal confinement. Prashar was posted as the Maur Station House Officer (SHO) at that time. Prashar’s friend was also arrested in the case under Sections 384, 365, 506 and 120-B of the IPC on the complaint of Mohammad Rafiq of Nagaur district in Rajasthan.

It was alleged that Rafiq and his three friends were coming back from the Amritsar airport in a car on September 26, 2019, after receiving Imran, who returned from Dubai. Prashar stopped their vehicle near Behman Diwana village in the district.

Under the garb of checking complainant’s jeep, the SI had allegedly taken them to the Maur police station. The accused, including Grover, allegedly took three items studded with 2 kg of gold brought by Imran from Dubai.

However, the SI was reinstated in the service by a senior police officer of the region.