Punjab Police carry out raids to find fugitive former DGP

The Special Investigation Team of Punjab Police has carried out raids in Himachal Pradesh and Delhi in an attempt to arrest the police force’s former director-general Sumedh Saini who is facing arrest for his part in the 1991 abduction and murder of Balwant Singh Multani.

However, the raids have so far proved unsuccessful and the former DGP is still on the run.

Earlier this month, Saini had escaped police watch at his residence in Chandigarh, according to local reports, and left behind the security assigned to him. However, the police later claimed that Multani had escaped from police custody in Gurdaspur. Officials said they had now carried out raids at the homes of Saini’s associates in Hoshiarpur and Mohali in Punjab, Dabwali and Sirsa in Haryana, and Delhi. 

They have also added a murder charge to Saini’s first incident report (FIR) after two former Chandigarh police officers — former UT police inspector Jagir Singh and former ASI Kuldeep Singh, who are also co-accused — offered further evidence against Saini in the case.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court and Mohali Court have rejected Saini’s plea for bail. The Punjab & Haryana High Court, headed by Justice Fatehdeep Singh, also rejected Saini’s petition challenging the legitimacy of the investigation being carried out into the Balwant Singh Multani case. In his petition, Saini had claimed that the investigation violates a previous Supreme Court’s judgment.

Balwant Singh Multani was arrested after a car bomb attack on Saini, who was then the senior superintendent of police in Chandigarh, in 1991. Three people were killed in the attack while Saini was injured. Chandigarh police then abducted Multani, a junior engineer, from his residence after the attack. The police then claimed that Multani escaped police custody. He was never seen again.

However, 16 years later in 2007, three other accused in the blast were acquitted. Multani’s father filed an affidavit claiming that his son was killed by police back in 1991 itself and claimed that there were witnesses who could testify to this. In 2007, the Punjab & Haryana High Court had ordered a CBI inquiry into this case. The CBI had found enough evidence against Sumedh Saini after which an FIR was registered against him.

“During the night of December 13, 1991, the cops of Sector-17 police station produced Balwant Singh Multani before Sumedh Saini,” eyewitness Gursharan Kaur Mann revealed earlier this year. “He was tortured so cruelly that he was left unable to stand. When he fell down, Sumedh Saini kicked him so cruelly that his eye came out. Next morning, he was lying unconscious in a pool of blood. Saini came and ordered the cops to put him inside a vehicle and they took him along with them.”