Amritsar, June 28
Taking a suo motu notice on the basis of the news, ‘Cops thrash woman in labour, killing baby’, Mr Naranjan Singh, Chairman, Punjab State Scheduled Caste Commission (PSSCC) today sought a report from the Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar in a week.
Talking to The Tribune on telephone, Mr Niranjan Singh said that since the matter related to the ‘police atrocities’, the PSSCC had decided to seek report from the civil authorities to conduct fair a inquiry into the matter in a stipulated time.
Meanwhile, the post-mortem examination, conducted by Dr Rahul Chawla and Dr Puneet Arora has confirmed that the child when born was alive but he died after delivery due to ‘intra-cranial haemorrhage’. Dr J.S.Dalal, Principal, Medical College confirmed the post-mortem report pointing out internal injury being the major cause of the death of the newly born child.
In another development, the body of the child was found missing from the graveyard of Kuttiwal village. Some residents of the village, who did not want to be identified, said that the body might have been taken out by the in-laws of the victim, Raj. The victim was deserted by her husband for the past few months and she was living with her parents in the village.
The victim had alleged after a theft of jewellery from the house of landlord Dalbir Singh he had blamed her brother Jaspal Masih for the alleged crime. The Awaz-e-Aman, an NGO, which took up the case had alleged that the incident occurred due to ‘callous attitude’ of the police.
The NGO alleged that instead of taking any action against the ‘guilty officials’ the department today tried to hush up the case by ‘compelling the eyewitnesses to turn hostile’. The NGO sought a CBI inquiry into the whole incident.
However, Mr Gautam Cheema, SSP Majitha police district, claimed the victim and her family members had put the blame on police since they wanted to pre-empt action against the accused, involved in theft cases. He described the charges ‘baseless, incorrect and misleading’.
Midwife Chando, who had conducted the delivery in a volte -face, said that no woman police constable had entered the ‘labour room’ to torture the victim. Complainant landlord Dalbir Singh and his supporters who gathered at Lopoke claimed that brother of the victim had ‘confessed’ in public that he had committed the theft. They further claimed that the matter was discussed in the presence of ‘well meaning persons’. Senior police officials blamed the NGO for taking ‘mileage’ by highlighting ‘baseless case of torture’.
