Embarrassed govt mulling purge, reshuffle

CHANDIGARH: Even nearly after two weeks of police action and investigations in sensational murder case of a businessman in Kaithal in Haryana all the five-six identified suspects successfully continue to elude the police. The notorious gang was allegedly being run by Surinder Geong from his cell in Karnal jail.
Police is finding itself defenceless in this case as the deceased, Narinder Arora, a plywood dealer, had reported of receiving extortion threats and was provided with a gunman as a protective measure.To claim some success in the investigations police have rearrested Geong on production warrants and caught hold of half a dozen others on charges of conspiracy or harbouring the criminals.
Surprisingly, a deputy superintendent of Karnal jail, Dharamvir Malik has also recently been arrested on charges of murder and conspiracy. Reportedly Geong has confessed that Malik provided him a mobile phone in the jail on payment of Rs 10,000. Geong used the cell phone to organise the gang and implement the whole plan.
Narinder was asked either to pay Rs 50 lakh as extortion or loose his life. Geong is learnt to have told the interrogators that Malik had also demanded a share in the booty.
Only a few weeks before the murder, acting on information that threats were being issued to businessmen by inmates of Karnal jail, Kaithal police had recovered 12 mobile phones during a series of searches in the jail premises. An inmate, Sultan Singh was arrested.
...Not realising the gravity of the threats, which were issued to more than half a dozen businessmen and doctors of Kaithal district, the police took the matter lightly and posted just one gunman with Arora. The gunman, as per an arrangement with Arora, used to stand guard at his shop and leave as soon as Arora reached home.
On the day of the murder the gunman apparently left his guard early, leaving Arora at the mercy of the killers, who shot him from point blank range while he was closing his shop for the day. The gunman has been suspended.
Acting lately, the police have now provided security to all the businessmen and doctors who had received threats and this time the terms are not being allowed to be dictated by those under protection.
The entire episode, besides exposing the chinks in the preparedness of the police force, has also highlighted the malaise in the functioning of the jail department. Senior officers of the jails department, while admitting to the massive slide in the functioning of the jail administration over past few years, claim that steps are on to spruce up the system.
...Under a crackdown launched against erring jail officials the department has dismissed an assistant jail superintendent, and suspended a jail superintendent, a deputy jail superintendent, eight assistant jail superintendents, two clerks, four head warders and two warders during the past six months.
However, an embarrassed state government, is learnt to have expressed its displeasure over the happenings to the police and prisons departments. Discussions at the highest level have already begun to purge the prisons department, which has been neglected for long.
Radical changes in the functioning of the department are in the offing. The efficacy of having top brass of the department on deputation from the police department is being questioned since the government feels most of these officers consider it as a sidelined posting.
A major reshuffle is also expected in the police department in the coming week with the state government looking for a replacement for state vigilance bureau director K Koshy who is to be relieved for taking up his new assignment as additional director general CRPF on deputation.