Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, October 25
Over two years after Akali leader Mukhjit Singh Mukha was allegedly gunned down by a police party, the Punjab Government today claimed that action had been initiated against the policemen.
Advocate General Atul Nanda told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that the services of four cops were being placed under suspension.
The action was initiated after Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain of the High Court rapped the state for a “vague” submission on investigations and called Nanda for assistance in the matter.
“The Special Investigation Team has already found that he had been wrongly killed. Has the departmental inquiry been conducted without suspending them? You are not filing a proper affidavit,” the Bench asserted.
Describing it as a “very serious case”, Justice Jain said, “There is also the question of compensation for the victim’s wife.”
The victim’s wife Harjit Kaur had earlier moved the High Court for Rs 50-lakh compensation and a government job. The petitioner claimed that her husband, aged about 38 years, was killed by a police party of Amritsar district on June 16, 2015, by “waylaying him and indiscriminately firing gunshots at him in his car”.
The court was told that he sustained 23 gunshot injuries. A Special Investigation Team was formed. News reports were also carried in leading newspapers quoting the Commissioner of Police and other police officials as saying that the police had killed Mukha after mistaking him for a gangster.
The counsel added that the then Deputy Chief Minster-cum-Home Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal visited the petitioner and the victim’s family before announcing compensation and a government job to the widow. The state government gave a cheque for Rs 5 lakh, which was inadequate. Moreover, till date the state government had not provided government job to the petitioner.
