M A I N   N E W S

Threat Row
Punjab cops raided trader’s house, HC told
Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 14
Just over a week after Delhi businessman Ashish Kumar created a flutter in the Punjab and Haryana High Court by claiming that Punjab Vigilance chief Sumedh Singh Saini was out to eliminate him, his counsel today claimed his house in Delhi was raided by the Punjab Police.Appearing on Ashish Kumar’s behalf before Justice Daya Chaudhary, his counsel Sanjiv Bansal said the house was raided after a Ludhiana court issued non-bailable warrants against him and his mother Amar Kaur.

Bansal insisted attempts to arrest him were being made after the Delhi High Court ordered for day-to-day proceedings in the case against Saini pertaining to disappearance of Ashish Kumar’s brother, Vinod Kumar, and two others.

Taking a note of his apprehensions of being picked up, Justice Chaudhary questioned how could the police take him from his house in Delhi, without taking into confidence the Delhi Police.

Responding to the query, Bansal said Punjab’s former police chief SS Virk was also picked up by the Punjab Police from Maharashtra Sadan without informing the Delhi Police. Virk was a serving DGP, but the petitioner was an ordinary man, Bansal added.

He also sought two days to file an amended petition in the high court. As the case came up for resumed hearing, Bansal asked for two-day protection for Ashish for enabling him to appear in the Ludhiana court to join the proceedings.

Ashish Kumar has all along been saying his brother Vinod Kumar, brother-in-law Ashok Kumar and their driver Mukhtiar Singh were kidnapped and later eliminated; and the CBI found Saini and three other police officials directly responsible for their disappearance. His family was chief financier to Saini Motors, run by the divorced husband of Sumedh Singh Saini’s sister, Ashish Kumar has been asserting.

Opposing the plea, Additional Advocate-General Rupinder Singh Khosla said there were other cases going against Ashish and Amar Kaur and they had attended 94 hearing in one and 71 hearings in the other case, but had not been harmed. Khosla said the state was concerned about allegations made against a senior and the “most efficient officer”.Describing as false all allegations, Khosla said petitioner Ashish Kumar and his family had been facing cases much before Saini joined as an IPS officer. Rather, 1982-batch officer Saini was, after training, first posted in 1985, while a case was filed in 1978.

“Anti-social elements of various hues have got together to harass an able officer of Punjab,” Khosla said.