No justice for 6 years, victims’ kin reluctant to assist new SIT

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, May 10

Weeks after the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed an earlier inquiry and the state government constituted a new SIT to probe the 2015 Kotkapura police firing incident, family members of some victims and witnesses

are reluctant to come forward to assist the SIT.

Sukhraj Singh, son of Krishan Bhagwan Singh, one of the protesters who was killed in police firing at Behbal Kalan on October 14, 2015, alleged after about six years of harassment when the witnesses and the victims’ families deposed before several judicial commission and police investigation teams, justice kept eluding them and now, they didn’t have any faith of getting it.

“We have come to know that all the victims are being used as political fodder by the parties. While many of the witnesses are tired of making repeated rounds of police offices, others have not received any support or protection from intimidation,” he alleged. There are over 100 witnesses in the Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan police firing cases.

One of the key witnesses, Surjit Singh, died in January 2020 under mysterious circumstances. Another key witness, brother of a deceased in the Behbal Kalan case, allegedly turned hostile.

Two months back, the then SIT had raised the issue of witness allurement, alleging that a complainant in the FIR of Kotkapura firing incident was offered a job by SGPC officials to make him turn hostile in the case.

The old SIT had demanded protection for witnesses as most of them come from under-privileged class of society while all the accused are influential and highly powerful. Hence, the witnesses should be provided adequate mental and physical protection to ensure fair trial of the cases, the SIT had demanded at that time.