Highway robbery, murder case solved, 4 held by Kapurthala police
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, July 12
The Kapurthala police arrested four miscreants for a robbery and murder case in which a truck driver was hacked to death with his body dumped in the Beas. His iron-rod laden truck was also robbed. The highway robbery was solved within 19 hours of the incident.
Those held have been identified as Manpreet Singh, Harjit Singh, Gurmail Singh and Sukhjinder Singh, all belonging to various parts of Amritsar district.
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Harkamalpreet Singh Khakh said Manpreet was a kingpin of this gang which was involved in murder and highway robbery cases and is one of the offenders in three cases.
The gang had also committed similar crimes in Punjab and other states, including murder at Guwahati, Assam, theft of a truck from Amritsar under the NDPS case, he said. He added that yesterday at 7 pm, some miscreants had murdered a truck driver Manjit Singh, a resident of Daulatpur village, Begowal and thrown his dead body from the Beas Bridge.
He said several special police teams were formed under the supervision of ASP Bhulath Ajay Gandhi, comprising the SHO of police station Dhilwan and other police staff, which started the investigation after registering the case under Sections 302,201,392,120-B of the Indian Penal Code, on the statement of victim’s cousin Nishan Singh.
The SSP said the police teams have been raiding the hideouts of the accused identified during the investigation and at the same time, information has been received from a source that the accused were present in the robbed truck number (PB10-CL-9291) at the bus stand Umarpura, Amritsar. The police team immediately reached the spot and arrested the four accused and recovered the truck from the spot, he added.
During the preliminary interrogation of the accused, they confessed their crime and revealed that Manpreet Singh Manna was the kingpin of this gang and their only motive was to loot the iron rods in truck. They also disclosed that they have sold the looted iron to scrap dealer Jaswinder Singh, son of Nidhan Singh and Shamsher Singh, both residents of Umarpura village.
The SSP said the police teams also booked Jaswinder Singh and Shamsher Singh for intentionally buying looted iron and raided their place, from where both managed to escape after spotting the police party. But the police team recovered the looted iron from their shop. The SSP said the accused would be produced in the local courts and would be taken on remand for further interrogation as many more revelations are expected in similar incidents. He said the body has also been recovered from Beas and handed over to the family after post-mortem.
