Patiala: A special CBI court in Patiala awarded life imprisonment to seven retired cops - a superintendent of police, two inspectors, two sub-inspectors, an assistant sub-inspector, and one constable - and a serving inspector for killing four youths in two fake encounters during the peak of terrorism in 1992.
The Punjab police had picked up the victims, whose bodies were never recovered, citing their alleged involvement in a bomb blast at the Punjab Armed Police Complex in 1991, which had left around 15 people injured. The sentence was awarded in two separate cases of fake encounter killings. Of the 24 accused, 16 were let off by the court.
The CBI had begun an investigation into the case after Joga Singh of Jalandhar, and Gurmeet Kaur and Surta Singh of Gurdaspur district, had approached the Punjab and Haryana high court, alleging that their sons Rajwinder Singh, and Mukhtiar and Baljit Singh, respectively, were killed in fake encounters. The CBI had initiated a probe in 1997.
