HC reserves verdict in Junaid case

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 17

Just about six months after 15-year-old Junaid Khan was stabbed to death on a train, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today reserved its verdict on his father’s plea for probe by an independent agency such as the CBI.

Justice Rajan Gupta reserved the verdict after hearing lengthy arguments from all parties related to the case. Junaid’s father, Jalaluddin, had during the course of hearing claimed that panchayats were being organised in his village for pressuring him to withdraw the case. He had also alleged that the Haryana Government was knowingly shutting its eyes.

Counsel for Haryana, on the other hand, claimed before Justice Gupta’s Bench that Junaid’s father was bargaining for a compromise. In a detailed reply, Mohinder Singh, DSP (Railways), Faridabad, ,submitted that the petition filed by Junaid’s father was abuse of the process of law.

Junaid, his brother and their two cousins were attacked on a Mathura-bound train in June by a mob, which allegedly hurled communal slurs on the victims. Cheema claimed that the offences were intentionally diluted.

In his petition, Jalalunddin through counsel Arshdeep Singh Cheema had contended that the occurrence was deliberately projected as sudden and confined to anindividual act.

Cheema added it was done to give benefit to the accused and to camouflage the existence of an unlawful assembly “having object of commission of a serious offence”. The statements of witnesses, too, were not recorded as per the law.

Dubbing it as a clear case of deliberate distortion of true facts in the course of investigation, Cheema had asserted that calculated distortions, discrepancies and contradictions were introduced. As a direct result of the infirmities introduced into the case, four accused were admitted to bail even before the trial started.