Sacrilege Cases: Sans identification details, SIT faces difficulty in nabbing POs

Faridkot, May 28

Investigating three sacrilege incidents of 2015 in Faridkot, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the police is facing an upheaval task in tracing three proclaimed offenders (POs), the key culprits.

No passports, fingerprints

So far, the Punjab Police don’t have passports, fingerprints and scar or tattoo marks of any of the three absconding accused — Sandeep Bareta, Harsh Dhuri and Pardeep Kaler — to identify them as they have been absconding for the past eight years.

After the recent blunder of ‘mistaken identity’ when an engineer was detained at the Bengaluru airport believing him to be a PO and one of the main conspirators, Sandeep Bareta, the police now want to tread with caution.

So far, the police don’t have passports, fingerprints and scar or tattoo marks of any of the three absconding accused – Sandeep Bareta, Harsh Dhuri and Pardeep Kaler – to identify them as they have been absconding for the past eight years.

The absence of these details landed the Bengaluru airport authorities and the Punjab Police in an embarrassing situation this week after the former detained an innocent engineer at the airport, believing him to be Bareta, on the basis of the lookout notice (LOC) issued by the state police. The LOC issued by the Punjab police had limited details of the accused such as their name, father’s name, year of birth and photographs.

As per the police record, the permanent addresses of these POs is the Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa. The Punjab Police face a lot difficulty in reaching their family members in the dera and question them after crossing several layers of security and taking the Haryana Police in the loop.

At present, the police don’t have information whether these accused are in the country or they have fled abroad. As the recent ‘detention’ of an innocent person at the Bengaluru airport had left the police red-faced and loss of over Rs 2 lakh as travelling expenses, the police are now trying to procure the passport details of all these 3 POs from the Passport Office authorities. It would help in their true identification and avoid any embarrassing situation for the police, said a senior functionary in the SIT.