HC upholds life sentence to 5 cops

CHANDIGARH: Shocked at the display of brute force that led to the death of a 21-year-old in custody, justices S K Mittal and Daya Chaudhary of the Punjab and Haryana High Court have upheld the life sentence to five Punjab cops, saying ���law does not provide the police any right to torture an accused���.
Miffed over the appellants��� attempts to justify their act of strangulating a young man after a sever thrashing and then trying to pass the murder off as suicide, the judges, in their recent detailed order, a copy of which was made available on Tuesday, said the appellants��� deed could not be termed ���an act done in good faith and in furtherance of public duty���.
���The impugned judgment of conviction and order of sentence passed by the trial court is upheld. Accordingly, all appeals filed by the appellants are dismissed,��� they said.
On November 5, 2007, the sessions court, Amritsar, had convicted five police officials under sections 342, 364 and 302 of IPC, for wrongful confinement, abduction and murder of Sukhwinder Singh alias Shinda, who had a garment stall in Rayya town of Amritsar district. The cops were sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2,000 under section 302 of IPC; imprisonment for one year under section 342 of IPC; and rigorous imprisonment for 5 years and a fine of Rs 1,000 under section 364 of IPC. All the sentences were to run concurrently.
Aggrieved over their conviction, Daljit Singh, Tarsem Singh, Kabal Singh, Lakhwinder Singh and Kulwant Singh moved the high court seeking setting aside of the sessions order.
The matter stemmed from an FIR registered at Police Station Beas on the statement by Mohinder Singh (Shinda���s grandfather), on November 23, 2005. The complainant had accused four of the five appellant cops of picking up Shinda from his stall and taking him to Rayya police post. Even as Shinda���s mother and grandfather tried to get him out of police custody, they were accosted by his dead body lying at the Bath Hospital. SP (D) S K Agnihotri, who inquired into the matter, called it a case of suicide.