The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to interfere with a fresh FIR lodged against former Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini in the murder case of 33-year-old junior engineer Balwant Singh Multani, who had gone missing in 1991 and was later found to have been murdered.
A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Pankaj Mithal said that it would not like to interfere in the FIR in view of the developments after the chargesheet was filed in the case. However, the apex court said that the observations and conclusions recorded in the judgment of the Punjab and Haryana High Court dated 8 September 2020 will not hinder the proceedings before the lower court.
According to PTI, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini, sought quashing of the FIR, saying it was filed in 2020, decades after the alleged incident, for political reasons. He said this court has repeatedly granted relief to the former DGP, who has been a respected officer, and even protected him from any punitive action in the case.
Justice Sundaresh said that since the chargesheet has been filed in the case, he cannot consider quashing the FIR at this stage. The bench said that Saini can face the proceedings before the trial court and challenge them before the appropriate forum.
On January 5, 2021, the apex court had asked the Punjab government to place on record the chargesheet filed in the fresh FIR lodged against former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini in the case. The apex court had already granted anticipatory bail to Saini in the fresh case registered in connection with the disappearance and murder of Multani in 1991.
On December 3, 2020, the apex court had granted anticipatory bail to Saini in the fresh case filed in the 33-year-old incident and set aside the order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which had denied him anticipatory bail in the 33-year-old case. The apex court had said that the delay in filing the FIR in the present case can certainly be a valid consideration for granting anticipatory bail.
It was notable that the FIR dated 6 May 2020 was lodged by the deceased’s brother Palwinder Singh Multani almost 29 years after the date of the incident. It was said that the fresh FIR also only contained allegations of kidnapping, destruction of evidence, wrongful confinement, voluntarily causing hurt and criminal conspiracy under the IPC for which anticipatory bail order was granted in Saini’s favour.
Sumedh Singh Saini was booked in connection with Multani’s disappearance in May 2020, when he was working as a junior engineer with the Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Corporation. On September 8, 2020, the high court had rejected two petitions of Saini for anticipatory bail in the case and also quashed the fresh FIR.
Saini had approached the high court after a Mohali court rejected his bail plea in the case on September 1, 2020. The Punjab police had on September 3, 2020 claimed that Saini had “absconded”, while his wife’s claims of withdrawal of his security cover were denied.
A Mohali court on August 21, 2020, allowed the Punjab police to add murder charges against them in the case. This happened after two former Chandigarh police personnel turned approvers in the case. UT Police Inspector Jagir Singh and ASI Kuldeep Singh are also co-accused in the case.
The apex court had earlier quashed the FIR related to the case lodged when Sumedh Singh Saini was the Inspector General of Police. Multani, a resident of Mohali, was picked up by the police in 1991 after a terror attack on Saini, who was then the Senior Superintendent of Police in Chandigarh. However, the police later claimed that Multani had escaped from the custody of the Qadian police in Gurdaspur. Following this, a case was registered against Sumedh Singh Saini and six others on the complaint of Multani’s brother Palwinder, who hails from Jalandhar.
The accused have been booked under sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), 344 (wrongful confinement), 330 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code at the Mataur police station in Mohali.
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