Undertrial killing: kin demand probe;action taken against cops

Relatives and villagers of under-trial Sukhwinder Singh, who was shot dead while being taken back to jail yesterday, staged a protest today, even as Punjab government took action against police officers for "security lapses" which led to the killing.
Demanding a judicial probe into the murder of Singh alias Sukha Kahlwan, action against cops who failed to resist the attack and arrest of killers at the earliest, his relatives and villagers staged a protest at a civil hospital here.
Sharp-shooter Sukha (27), an undertrial, was shot dead by about a dozen armed miscreants, believed to be of a rival gang, near a public school across Chachoki village between Phagwara and Goraya on NH 1 yesterday when he was being taken back to Nabha jail after being produced in a Jalandhar court.

A board of doctors comprising Vijay Kumar, Rajesh Chander and Hardip Singh Sethi, condcuted post mortem examination on his body in local civil hospital today, police said.
The body was handed over to his relatives who said it will be kept in a mortuary near his native village Kahlwan near Kartarpur of Jalandhar district.
They said Sukha's parents Sudarshan Singh Kahlon and Harjinder Kaur Kahlon, settled in USA, were likely to reach their village tomorrow.

Sukha will be cremated either tomorrow or day after in case his parents reached late, they said.
Sukha's maternal aunts Amarjit Kaur and Harjinder Kaur, maternal grandfather Paramjit Singh and co-villagers Shangara Singh and Block Samiti member and a former sarpanch Bhupinder Singh put posers before newsmen over the security lapse in the incident and dubbed police's laxity as "criminal negligence".

They asked "why Sukha was being taken in an ordinary jeep when he was jailed in high-security Nabha jail? Why did the six cops accompanying him not retaliate even when they had carbines with them? Why was the gang leader Gonder of Malot, who along with other gangsters had danced 'bhangra' after killing Sukha and who had openly declared at the site that he had avenged the killing of his brother Lovely by murdering Sukha, not arrested so far?"
They also expressed doubts over the police theory that the gangsters had disarmed the cops by snatching their carbines which were later found thrown a little distance away from the site of crime.