A Jammu and Kashmir police sub inspector dodged a trap laid by the CBI at R S Pura Police Station in connection with an alleged corruption case. Jammu district SSP Joginder Singh confirmed that the CBI had laid a trap, but sub inspector Mohammad Bashir Malik managed to escape. “Not only the CBI, we too are looking for him,” he said.
Sub inspector Malik had arrested former sarpanch of gharana panchayat Gurdyal Singh in connection with the death of one 38-year-old Pooja Devi. Post-mortem and FSL reports had ruled out any injuries or traces of poison in her body. Relatives of Singh accused Malik of trying to frame him to extort money.
According to the police, Malik, who was due to retire in months, was arrested in March after a month-long hunt. He was booked under Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita’s sections 319 (cheating by personation), 318 (deceiving or dishonestly inducing a person so deceived to deliver any property to any person), 309 (robbery) and 61 (criminal conspiracy), the police said. After spending 15 days in police custody and two days in judicial custody, he was released on bail and was attached with the district police lines at Jammu and then posted at R S Pura police station.
Sources said that on April 28 Pooja Devi was taken to R S Pura Hospital by her husband Kulvir Singh in a car driven by Gurdyal Singh when her condition deteriorated. Later, she died at the hospital. Singh is the cousin of Pooja’s husband and was called by her mother-in-law, said Gurdyal Singh’s brother-in-law Gurmeet Singh. Pooja Devi’s father and other relatives then accused her in-laws of poisoning her. Following this, police initiated inquest proceedings and sub inspector Malik was appointed the investigating officer.
Though days later both the postmortem report and the viscera analysis ruled out any foul play in Pooja Devi’s death, Gurmeet Singh said that Malik then registered an FIR against the deceased’s in-laws and Gurdyal Singh.
Gurmeet Singh said that nearly 10 days ago, Pooja’s father called Gurdyal Singh at his friend’s house in R S Pura for “a compromise” and Malik arrested him, “much to his surprise”. Gurmeet alleged that Malik “started demanding money from his family to remove his name from the matter”.
The family then approached CBI officials who, after preliminary investigation, decided to lay a trap to nab Malik. As per the plan, Gurmeet said he gave Rs 50,000 in cash to Malik Friday evening as first instalment inside the R S Pura police station. He claimed that when the CBI officials rushed inside the police station, “the lights suddenly went out” and Malik, along with the money, vanished.
