Patti Congress MLA Harminder Singh Gill. (Source: Facebook/Harminder Singh Gill)In a lengthy post on Facebook, Patti Congress MLA Harminder Singh Gill on Saturday narrated the details of an alleged raid conducted by former Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Sumedh Saini at his 73-year-old uncle’s Mohali home in the middle of night in August 1992, when Congress’ Beant Singh was chief minister.
The post came a day after a Mohali court had on Friday allowed to add murder charges against Saini in connection with the alleged abduction of former government employee Balwant Singh Multani around 29 years ago. Two UT cops, Jagir Singh and Kuldeep Singh, recorded their statements under section 164 of CrPC that before his disappearance, Multani was tortured in custody of Saini.
Gill wrote, “I want to share a personal incident that had jolted me from the inside. My uncle Karam Singh, husband of my mother’s sister, was a priest at a gurdwara in Kolkata. However, he had to migrate to Punjab after the 1984 riots along with my aunt and their three children. My aunt opened a small school in their house at Mohali and my uncle started working as a priest.”
“Saini was SSP Chandigarh in 1991 and he raided the house of my uncle several times, blaming him for giving shelter to militants. Saini raided many times and he never found any objectionable material from the house of my uncle. Similarly raid was conducted on midnight of August 2012. Saini again found nothing from home, however, he burnt the certificates of my aunt in the yard of the house. He mercilessly beaten my baptized 73-year-old uncle in front of his three children,” alleged the MLA.
“I had never seen my uncle crying. He clung to me and cried like children when I went to his home the next day. He told me that he wanted to die. His three sons are settled in USA, Canada and Punjab respectively, however, they can never forget what happened with their father,” said MLA, who also shared a picture of his uncle and his son published in a Punjabi newspaper report about the alleged raid.
He further wrote, “I was reading that then United Nations Human Rights committee chief Christof Heyns had visited Punjab and said in his 2013 report on the disappearance of Balwant Singh Multani and many other youths that it was sad that instead of prosecuting officers like Sumedh Saini, they had been given promotions. CBI had registered a case in the disappearance of Multani in 2008 and Punjab and Haryana High court had also given a green signal to the agency to probe the allegations against Saini.”
In his Facebook post, which also has a picture of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal with Saini, Gill said, “But SAD moved Supreme Court against these orders and said in court that officers like Sumedh Saini should be encouraged. In its affidavit in Supreme Court to save Sumedh Saini, the then SAD government had said that the High Court’s action was legally impermissible and unsustainable. The Supreme Court accepted the government’s argument in 2011 and quashed the high court order which also quashed the CBI case against Saini.”
“I am not able to understand why the Akali government appointed Saini as DGP, ignoring the allegations against him by four senior police officers?” asked Gill.