Punjab police team raided a house in Chandigarh and a few other places owned by former State DGP Sumedh Singh Saini in the early hours of Friday in a case related to the disappearance of a man after a terrorist attack on him in Chandigarh in 1991. However, Sumedh Saini could not be found, officials said.
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The raid was launched a day after a Mohali court reserved its order on an anticipatory bail plea filed by the former Punjab Director General of Police in this case. On August 21, the court had allowed the Punjab police to add a murder charge against Saini in the case.
Hours after the raids on his Chandigarh residence, farm houses in Mohali and Himachal Pradesh and a house in Delhi, a Mohali court extended Saini’s interim bail till further orders.
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Earlier, he was given interim protection on August 25 after he filed an anticipatory bail plea to avoid arrest.
“The court has granted a stay on the arrest till final orders on the bail application,” Saini’s counsel A.P.S. Deol said. The court had on Thursday reserved its order on the plea. The next date of hearing is September 1.
Saini faces arrest as the court had on August 21 allowed the Punjab police to add a murder charge against him in this case. The court’s decision came after two former Chandigarh police personnel, who are also co-accused, turned approver in the disappearance case.
The former Punjab DGP was booked in the month of May this year in connection with the disappearance of Balwant Singh Multani, who was a junior engineer with Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Corporation.
Multani, who was a resident of Mohali, was picked up by police after the terrorist attack on Saini, who was then the senior superintendent of police in Chandigarh, in 1991, according to the FIR.
Saini and six others were booked on the complaint of Balwant Multani’s brother, Palwinder Singh Multani, who is a resident of Jalandhar. The case was registered against them under Sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), 344 (wrongful confinement), 330 (voluntarily causes hurt) and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code at Mataur police station in Mohali.
