Behbal Kalan police firing: SIT reaches Faridkot again to record witnesses' account

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, November 28

The special investigating team (SIT) probing the Kotkapura police firing case, on Monday reached Faridkot and recorded statement of some police officials and members of an NGO, who were eyewitnesses of the seven-year-old incident.

Gulneet Singh Khurana, SSP, Moga, and a SIT member, recorded statements at the camp office of the investigative team in Faridkot. Among those summoned by the SIT to get their version of the incident, include some victims, police officials on duty at the incident spot on October 14, 2015, and members of an NGO.

Sources in the SIT revealed that days before the incident of October 14, 2015, some NGOs had installed CCTV cameras at the main chowk (roundabout) of Kotkapura, the incident spot. The motive of installing cameras was to help the police in maintaining law and order in view of heavy vehicular traffic in the area and around the chowk.

These CCTVs had captured the police and protesters clashes on October 13 and October 14, 2015, at the chowk, which was the epicentre of these demonstrations against the sacrilege incidents that time.

As this chowk is close to the city police station in Kotkapura, so statements of many police officials, who were on duty in this police station at the time of incident, were also material evidence for the SIT.

However, victims and witnesses of the incident had common complaint of facing a lot of harassment in the last seven years when one investigative agency after another was summoning them at Chandigarh, Mohali or Faridkot to record their statements.

Some of these policemen felt more frustrated as they were not given travel expanses or other facility when they were summoned at Chandigarh or Mohali many times in the last seven years.

In the last over seven years, many officials and inquiry teams had reached Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura to record statements of witnesses and inspect the firing incident spot.

The statements of witnesses were recorded at Faridkot, Chandigarh and Mohali but nothing concrete had come out so far, rued Sukhraj Singh, son of a Bhagwan Krishan Singh, one of the two persons, who were killed in the police firing at Behbal Kalan.

Sukhraj is sitting on a protest dharna at Behbal Kalan for the last over one year, demanding justice in the sacrilege and police firing incidents. Earlier, the SIT reached Kotkapura on November 19. It is believed that before questioning former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini this week, the SIT once against wants to refresh its inputs.

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