Faridkot, July 26

Over 7 years after a prisoner in Faridkot Central Jail allegedly died by suicide, the police have registered a case under Section 306 of BNS (abetment of suicide) against Assistant Jail Superintendent (AJS) Jugraj Singh.

The case has been registered after the Faridkot Additional District and Sessions Judge, in his report, found the AJS prima facie guilty of the abetment of the suicide.

It was alleged that on the day of ending his life, the prisoner, Sukhmander Singh, handed over a letter to another jail inmate, asking him to send the letter to the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In this letter, purportedly written by Sukhmander Singh, it was alleged that AJS in the Faridkot jail, Jugraj Singh, was harassing the prisoner to extract money. Sukhmander Singh had allegedly died by suicide on March 17, 2017, about a month after he and his son Avtar Singh were sentenced to a year in jail.

Though a judicial inquiry into this suicide was started in March 2017, it kept getting delayed for various reasons, including the delayed receipt of the postmortem report of the deceased.

Earlier, the jail authorities had submitted a fact-finding report in the case, giving a clean chit to the AJS. In this report, the Jail Superintendent claimed that the complaint against the AJS in this suicide case was the handiwork of some mischievous persons, as neither the deceased nor his son ever raised the issue in jail. The Jail Superintendent claimed that the handwriting of the complainant and the deceased Sukhmander Singh needed to be matched before any action against the AJS.

However, in his inquiry report, the Faridkot Additional Session Judge said there was no material on the jail record to give credence to the theory of the jail superintendent. The judge said the question pertaining to the handwriting of the complaint of the deceased would be ascertained by an expert during the proceedings of the case.