5 Cops Given Life Sentence for 1993 Encounter Killing; New Judges Sworn In

A Central Bureau of Investigation court in Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar has sentenced five retired Panjab Police officers to life imprisonment in a 32-year-old case of two fake encounters of seven men from Tarn Taran. Former Bathinda Senior Superintendent of Police Bhupinderjit Singh, former Deputy Superintendent of Police Devinder Singh, former Inspector Suba Singh, and former Assistant Sub Inspectors Gulbarg Singh and Raghubir Singh were also fined USD 4K each for criminal conspiracy, murder, destruction of evidence, and forgery. The fine will be given to the families of the deceased as compensation. The accused were found guilty of staging two encounters in July 1993, where the victims, including three Special Police Officers Shinder Singh, Desa Singh, Sukhdev Singh, and a civilian Balkar Singh were illegally picked up from Rani Walla village, tortured and then shown as killed in encounters. In another case, three more abducted persons Mangal Singh, Sarabjit Singh, and Harvinder Singh were killed in an encounter. Meanwhile, ten District and Sessions Judges were sworn in on 4 Aug as Additional Judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court (PHHC), taking the court’s working strength to 59 against the sanctioned strength of 85. The appointments are part of a push to reduce a pendency of 4,33,720 cases. Concurrently, more than 82% of prisoners in Panjab’s jails are undertrials, with inmates behind bars for years without their trials concluding. Data compiled till 20 May shows that 30,339 of 36,846 inmates are undertrial prisoners, while only 6,457 are convicts. Men form the bulk of undertrials at 28,817, with 1,520 women and two transgender persons. One cause for delay in disposing cases is scarcity of judges, another is the habitual absence of police officers summoned as witnesses, especially in drug cases. The PHHC has repeatedly condemned this pattern, terming it as 'blatant disregard for judicial authority.' Amid this crisis, the Punjab State Legal Services Authority (PULSA) has launched Mission Mode Punjab to assist unrepresented prisoners. Of 460 identified cases, PULSA has filed criminal appeals in 406 for convicts lacking legal aid (earlier coverage).