‘Can’t explain agony we went through all these months’

Mohit Khanna 

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, April 28 

The worst nightmare of families of four missing Chandigarh men turned out to be true. 

For nearly four months. the family members of Pawan, Jayant, Prabhjot Singh and Ram Chaudhary were hoping that the four men will return safely, but the recovery of the car from Sidhwan Canal in Gurthali village today shattered their expectations.

On reaching the spot, the relatives of the deceased broke down in tears. 

"My son had done hotel management and was going to take a job at a hotel in Nairobi. He was barely 26- year- old. But destiny had some other plans," said KDS Nagra, who is also a national level weightlifting coach. 

The relatives of the deceased do not rule out foul play behind the incident.

They demanded that Raju, the driver of a local cloth manufacturer, who claimed to have met Jayant on January 15 (a day after the car fell in the canal) in Kharar, should be interrogated.

"Raju had stated to the police that he had met Jayant near Kharar bridge on the morning of January 15, while the four went missing on the night of January 14. Raju had stated to the police that he had handed over cloth consignment worth Rs 2.5 lakh to Jayant. How it is possible? We suspect something has gone wrong somewhere. Police should thoroughly probe the matter and Raju should be interrogated," said Pankaj Sharma, elder brother of Pawan Sharma. 

Pawan Sharma and the other three men had visited Ludhiana on January 14 after the Basti Jodhewal police arrested sales agents (Rampal and Pramod) of Jayant Rishi in a case of fraud registered on December 2, 2015.

It is leant that the four men had a heated argument with nearly 50 businessmen, whom had financial issues with Rampal and Parmod. "Initially we thought that these businessmen had kidnapped Pawan and other. But the police maintained that the businessmen had no role to play," said Pawan Kumar.

Police accused of shoddy investigation

The relatives blamed the police for shifting the case from one police station to another and misleading the family. They demanded action against the then SHO Jodhewal police Balwinder Singh Kala for deceiving the families. 

The relatives of the deceased said Balwinder Singh Kala had showed them CCTV footage of a car in which (the SHO claimed) Jayant and others had met Raju the driver in Kharar. 

Vinod Sharma, deceased Pawan Sharma's brother, said that had Raju and SHO Balwinder Singh not misled them the bodies of the deceased could have found long time ago. The tower location of the mobile phones then missing men were carrying was last shown at Gurthali village.

Since then, the police investigation has remained sluggish. The police had also spread word that Jayant, one of the four missing men, was reportedly spotted in Mohali and project Raju the driver as the eyewitness. Now the police appears to be on the back foot.