Petition filed in Punjab and Haryana HC over alleged false encounter of NRI in Patiala
Gurtej Singh Dhillon is the brother-in-law of Colonel Pushpinder Singh Bath, a serving army officer who, along with his son, was allegedly assaulted by the same police team near Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, earlier that night.
According to the petition, the police claimed that Jaspreet Singh was involved in the kidnapping of a minor and was shot during a gunfight after refusing to stop his vehicle. The FIR states that Singh, who was allegedly armed, opened fire on police officers, injuring two of them, and was subsequently killed in retaliatory firing. However, the petitioner has alleged that this was a staged encounter, orchestrated under the influence of liquor and misused authority, as the same officers had been recently rewarded and appreciated for earlier actions.
The post-mortem report of Jaspreet Singh has been attached with the petition, highlighting seven injuries, including fatal wounds to the forehead and chest from point-blank range, suggesting a close-range execution. The petitioner claims these findings strongly contradict the official version provided by the police and point to a fabricated narrative.
The petition further reveals that Jaspreet Singh has been a student residing in Canada since 2022 and has recently married. He had returned to India just days before the incident. The family, reportedly under pressure and facing threats, is being discouraged from pursuing legal remedies. A previous petition seeking a CBI inquiry into the encounter, filed by the victim's parents, is currently pending before the High Court, but Dhillon fears it may be withdrawn under pressure, which led him to file this fresh plea to ensure justice.
The petitioner also draws attention to a broader pattern of encounters in Punjab, stating that 20 such incidents have taken place between February and July 2025. A news report from an English daily has been submitted as evidence, indicating public concern over a rise in police-led encounters and the lack of accountability. Another news item appended to the petition shows that Punjab Police officials involved in this specific encounter were not only publicly praised by their superiors but also allegedly awarded with Rs 10 lakh and out-of-turn promotions.
Dhillon argues that an unbiased investigation is not possible if handled by Punjab Police, as the accused are their own officials. He therefore seeks that the case be transferred to an independent agency. Notably, the High Court has already handed over a related case, regarding the assault on Col. Bath and his son, to the CBI for investigation.
The matter is expected to be taken up in the coming weeks, while the earlier petition in the case is listed for hearing on September 17. (ANI)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Forward
a day ago
- Japan Forward
Abduction is a Global Issue
このページを 日本語 で読む JAPAN Forward has launched "Ignite," a series to share the voices of students in Japan who write in English. What do they see beyond our obvious differences, disabilities, and insecurities? Individually and collectively, today's students have the power to shape our global future. This sixth essay of the series, by Masakazu Takata, a junior high school student from Maizuru, is on the issue of North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens. Annually, the Headquarters for the Abduction Issue holds a North Korean Human Rights Violations Awareness Week Essay Contest for junior and senior high school students across the country. (The Government of Japan established the Headquarters, an organization led by the Prime Minister and composed of all the Ministers of State to resolve the abductions issue.) It aims to raise awareness of the abductions issue through viewing films and stage plays, reading books related to the issue, and other opportunities to help the students understand the feelings of abduction victims and their families. These students often go further, taking the opportunity of the essay contest to think deeply about what they can and should do to resolve the abduction issue. Some, like Masakazu Takata, also take on the challenge to directly communicate their thoughts and ideas to others in English. Let's listen. Sixth in the Series, 'Ignite' We cannot just "know" about the abduction issue. If Megumi and her family had not been abducted, they would still be living an ordinary, happy life. Such a daily life was interrupted by the abduction. In August [2024], I participated in the "Junior High School Summit on the Abduction Issue." There, I listened to a lecture by Takuya Yokota, the younger brother of Megumi Yokota, a victim of abduction. The abduction refers to the incident about fifty years ago when North Korea abducted young Japanese citizens to train their agents. Although North Korea admitted the fact, only 5 out of 17 abductees have returned. Even after half a century, the abduction issue remains unresolved. Masakazu Takata, a student at Maizuru City Kasa Junior High School, reads his winning essay during the 2024 North Korean Human Rights Violations Awareness Week seminar on December 14. (Screenshot) What we can do to solve the abduction issue is to first watch the anime "Megumi." At the summit, Mr Yokota emphasized the importance of thinking about it as a personal matter. It is crucial to watch it with the mindset of "What if my beloved family or friends were suddenly taken away?" After the summit, I watched "Megumi" again. It looked completely different. The first time I watched it was when I was in 7th grade. At that time, I watched it as a bystander. Now, I can feel the pain and suffering of the family. I understood the meaning of "as a personal matter" that Mr Yokota mentioned, and I became able to assert it in my own words. According to a public opinion survey, the percentage of people interested in the abduction issue is 73.6%. As the awareness of the issue fades over time, it is necessary to spread the abduction issue. The internet and social media are used by a wide range of age groups, from young people to the elderly. By utilizing information and communication technology, it is possible to disseminate information widely. The families of the abductees are aging, and Megumi's father, Shigeru, passed away in 2020 without meeting his beloved daughter. Therefore, the abduction issue is a race against time. Megumi Yokota (center) and her family visit the Japan Sea the year before she was abducted by North Korean agents. ( © Yokota family.) Conflicts continue around the world today, such as the invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in Palestine. It is common to see reports of conflicts when you turn on the TV. However, we must not forget about the abduction issue. It has been a silent battle for much longer than wars. From Mr Yokota's lecture, the desire of the abductees to "return to Japan as soon as possible" touched strongly in my heart. The abduction issue is not the past, and Megumi and others are still waiting for help with the single-minded desire to "meet their families." Therefore, I believe that raising our voices in cooperation with the world for the early return of the abductees will be the driving force for their rescue. As a participant in the summit, I felt a mission to disseminate the abduction issue. It is necessary to widely disseminate the current situation of the abduction issue and what we can do. I want to actively participate in future activities for the early return of the abductees. At the time he submitted this essay, Masakazu Takata was a student at Maizuru City Kasa Junior High School, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. He delivered this comment upon receiving the Grand Prize for an English essay by a junior high school student: Comment from the winner: After listening to Takuya Yokota's lecture this summer [2024], I realized that I had to think of the abduction issue as something that concerned me personally. As a citizen, I want to take action in whatever way I can. Author: TAKATA Masakazu Student, Maizuru City Kasa Junior High School このページを 日本語 で読む
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Digging into deadly secrets
Dang that Anthony Horowitz — he so confoundingly makes us think about every single word from start to finish, makes us work so hard to try to understand what goes on inside Atticus Pund's mind in 1955 even as Susan Ryeland struggles to sleuth how the murders in Pund's world hold clues to murders in her fictional 2025. Understand any of that? Great, then you know where we're going, and you're delighted with a successor to Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders. Don't have a notion where you are? Despair not, for you have an amazingly awesome murder mystery ahead of you. Anna Lythgoe photo Anthony Horowitz's mystery-within-a-mystery novels starring book editor Susan Ryeland demand the reader's attention. Horowitz is the 70-year-old devilishly-clever English author who created Foyle's War, adapted novels for Midsomer Murders, wrote new novels featuring Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, writes murder mysteries in which he plays himself as an always-a-step-behind, fumbling, bumbling John Watson-type chronicler to former cop Daniel Hawthorne. He wrote Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, both turned into magnificent series on PBS, and now here's Marble Hall Murders, even more complex than its predecessors. Though just oh-so far beyond good. Do not under any circumstances call it The Marble Hall Murders. The word 'The' does not appear in any of Horowitz's titles. You have been warned. Susan Ryeland is a book editor living in our time. It was her job to edit the Atticus Pund murder mysteries written by Alan Conway, a very difficult man who obviously ripped off Pund from Hercule Poirot, but did a very good job of doing so. Pund identified as a Greek Jew living in Germany who survived the Holocaust and ended up as a private detective in London in the 1950s. Conway despised the Pund books, always seeing himself not as a mystery writer but as a literary genius whose works would be dissected in PhD theses at Oxford and Cambridge. Alas… Conway wrote Pund with characters and events drawn from his real life. In Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, Horowitz gifted us with full-length Pund books-within-a-book, in which were hidden clues about who murdered whom in the world inhabited by Conway and Ryeland. Major characters in Pund's life mirrored people in Conway's life. That's why so many actors played dual roles. Still with us? Marble Hall Murders drives us much further up the wall because Ryeland finds herself reading not a book-within-a-book, but a Pund book delivered in four chunks of 10,000 to 30,000 words each, interspersed with contemporary adventures in which even Ryeland became suspected of — no, wait, can't get ahead of ourselves. As Marble Hall Murders begins, (spoiler alert) Alan Conway is dead, Susan Ryeland is an unemployed book editor in England no longer living in Crete with her one true love, and she gets hired to edit a 'continuation' novel — the Conway estate having approved the Pund books continuing through author Eliot Crace. Crace has a three-book contract, despite which he calls his first book-in-progress Pund's Last Case, poor Atticus having a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Eliot is the ne'er-do-well grandson of Miriam Crace, whose dozens of books about a tiny-sized human family made her the most adored children's author in the universe and controller of a vast fortune. She died in her sleep of a heart attack 20 years before. Marblee Hall Murders In Pund's Last Case, an exceedingly rich English woman who's dying asks Pund to come to her estate in France to sort something so evil — well, she'll tell him when he gets there. And Pund arrives, hours after the woman dies of a heart attack immediately after drinking her daily tea that tasted a little funny. Crace accuses his rather large and scurrilous family of having murdered granny Miriam — each character in Pund's Last Case is based on a character in the Crace family, and Eliot promises the book will reveal who murdered granny Crace. Need to ask again, are you still with us? Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The Crace family can't afford a scandal — Miriam's books are having a resurgence, and Netflix has proposed a $200-million series of movies and a multi-year TV show. Susan Ryeland is caught up in the middle of all this mess, desperately trying to decipher who among so many nasty people in a piece of fiction is the avatar of a killer in her world. Horowitz plays fair. The clues are there, both in Atticus Pund's world and in Susan Ryeland's, if only we are keen enough and sufficiently sharp to catch them. Anthony, you are a devious and wicked fellow — do keep it up. Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin was dismayed to learn that Susan Ryeland does not approve of pets sleeping on their humans' bed at night. He had been unaware such attitudes even existed.
Montreal Gazette
2 days ago
- Montreal Gazette
Letters: Hockey trial verdict sad day for Canada
After a mistrial, two dismissed juries and an eventual trial by judge, I was not surprised by the ruling that found all five hockey players not guilty of sexual assault. In what world is it normal for five young men to think it is OK to have sex in a hotel room with a young woman who has consumed copious amounts of alcohol? The issue in my view is one of moral decency, the ability to give consent, and again, a victim being re-victimized. Sad day in this country. Victoria Jonas, Beaconsfield CAQ out of touch with today's reality I am deeply dismayed by the Legault government's ongoing assault on English-language institutions in Montreal. The most recent example — the $30-million fine levied against LaSalle College for alleged violations of Quebec's increasingly draconian language laws — is both troubling and short-sighted. LaSalle College, which is in fact bilingual and widely recognized as one of the finest institutions of its kind in Canada, now faces an existential threat — not because of any failure to serve its students, but because it does not conform to a narrow and insular vision of Quebec's identity. It is time for the government to acknowledge that today's generation of Quebecers — francophone, anglophone and allophone alike — is bilingual, globally minded and eager to engage with the wider world. Ironically, I believe the group most harmed by these restrictive policies are francophone Quebecers themselves, who are being held back by an imposed cultural isolation that no longer reflects the reality or aspirations of modern Quebec society. Robert Sugar, Westmount Put the screws on speed demons I was gobsmacked reading about the motorist who was ticketed by Montreal police over a missing licence plate screw. Far more serious infractions happen daily. I see drivers routinely ignoring stop signs, particularly at T-intersections, and 50 km/h seems to have become the new normal in 30 km/h school zones. The only upside? At least it appears there's a police presence in some parts of Montreal. In D.D.O.'s West Park area, enforcement seems nonexistent. M. Evelyn Watson, Dollard-des-Ormeaux Picture is bleak for art heritage Re: 'Pointe-Claire seniors rally to save beloved murals' (The Gazette, July 23) Tex Dawson's 'windows' into Montreal's architectural heritage enlighten both the residents of Le Wellesley and the pluralist cultural life of this city. How much of our pictorial heritage will be lost due to the insensitive interests of mediocre 'modernization'? Je me souviens Corridart and the Van Horne mansion destruction decades ago. John A. Schweitzer, Montreal Submitting a letter to the editor Letters should be sent by email to letters@ We prioritize letters that respond to, or are inspired by, articles published by The Gazette. If you are responding to a specific article, let us know which one. Letters should be sent uniquely to us. The shorter they are — ideally, fewer than 200 words — the greater the chance of publication. Timing, clarity, factual accuracy and tone are all important, as is whether the writer has something new to add to the conversation. We reserve the right to edit and condense all letters. Care is taken to preserve the core of the writer's argument. Our policy is not to publish anonymous letters, those with pseudonyms or 'open letters' addressed to third parties. Letters are published with the author's full name and city or neighbourhood/borough of residence. Include a phone number and address to help verify identity; these will not be published. We will not indicate to you whether your letter will be published. If it has not been published within 10 days or so, it is not likely to be.
