CHANDIGARH: Haryana top cop Shatrujeet Singh Kapur, and head of Rohtak police, Narendra Bijarnia, and 11 other officers are named in a First Information Report (FIR) for abetment to suicide and under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in connection with the death of IPS officer Y Puran Kumar, a 2001-batch officer.
It is alleged Kumar died by suicide when he shot himself at his Sector 11 Chandigarh residence on Tuesday. An eight-page suicide note, recovered accuses senior officers of “mental harassment”.
The IPS officr’s body was found by his daughter in the basement.
Kumar’s wife also shot off a letter to the Chief Minister seeking justice for her husband.
Meanwhile, following a complaint by Kumar’s wife, a six-member Special Investigation Team (SIT), led by IG Pushpendra Kumar, has been constituted by Chandigarh Police to investigate the alleged suicide of Kumar.
The SIT comprises Kanwardeep Kaur, Senior Superintendent of Police, KM Priyanka, SP/City, Charanjit Singh Virk, DSP/Traffic as IO, Gurjit Kaur, SDPO/South, and Insp Jaiveer Singh Rana, SHO/PS-11 (West).
Amneet,wife of Kumar is the commissioner and secretary of the Haryana government’s Department of Foreign Cooperation; she was in Japan as part of a delegation led by Chief Minister Nayab Saini when her husband died by suicide.
“I am not only pleading for my family, but for the value of every honest officer’s life and dignity. This is not a case of ordinary suicide but a direct result of systematic persecution of my husband – an officer from SC community by powerful and high-ranking officers who have used their positions to mentally torture him, ultimately driving him to such an extent that he was left with no other option but to take his life,” Amneet said in her police complaint against the officers.
The case has triggered nationwide outrage, with Dalit outfits and political leaders demanding swift justice. Postmortem and cremation of Kumar is pending.
“While official narratives suggest suicide, my soul cries for justice as a wife witnessing years of systematic humiliation, harassment and persecution inflicted upon my husband by senior officials,” she said further.
The officer’s suicide note says that the “caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, and targeted mental harassment and atrocities” against him started when he visited a temple in an Ambala police station in 2020.
The Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, said the ‘suicide’ of the Haryana IPS officer is a symbol of “deepening social poison”.
“The suicide of Haryana IPS officer Y Puran Kumar is a symbol of the deepening social poison that is crushing humanity in the name of caste,” Rahul Gandhi posted on X. He claimed the IPS officer had to “endure humiliation and oppression” because of his caste.
“When an IPS officer has to endure humiliation and oppression because of his caste – imagine the circumstances in which an ordinary Dalit citizen must be living,” Rahul Gandhi said.
