How a top cop evaded prison for 15 years despite criminal conduct, won president’s medal
Kultar Singh, a retired deputy inspector general of Punjab Police, walked out of Amritsar Central Jail on 28 March, barely over a month into an eight-year jail term for his role in a 2004 mass-suicide case. On 17 February this year, a sessions court in Punjab had held Kultar guilty for abetment of suicide, criminal intimidation, criminal conspiracy, forgery and extortion by threatening with an accusation of an offence that is punishable with death or imprisonment.
The mass-suicide case pertained to five members of a family who lived in a three-storied house in Amritsar’s Chowk Karori locality. On the night intervening 30 and 31 October 2004, the family members—Jaswant Kaur, her son Hardeep Singh and his wife, along with the couple’s two children, both minors—killed themselves and left various copies of suicide notes detailing the circumstances that led to their death. In them, Hardeep wrote that he had killed his father. Four relatives and Kultar found out about this. Instead of following the law, all five of them extorted lakhs of rupees from Hardeep and continued to blackmail him. Post the suicide—according to the February judgment—Hardev Singh, a police officer, tampered with the evidence to keep Kultar out of jail.
All six—the four relatives, Hardev and Kultar—were convicted in February. However, by June end, they had been granted parole, as part of the government decision to decongest prisons in light of the novel coronavirus outbreak. “With an entire system protecting Kultar Singh, we were glad that justice prevailed after more than 15 years,” Sarabjit Singh Verka, an advocate who was the complainant in the case against the senior policeman, said. “But courtesy COVID-19, he and other accused are out—this case looks jinxed.”
It is hard to rubbish Verka’s scepticism. Between 2004 and 2020, Kultar faced multiple allegations—of not just his role in the suicide case, but also of large-scale corruption—and somehow, he managed to stay out of prison. Documents show that Punjab’s home department was in the know of the corruption allegations even before the mass-suicide case, and that the police had led multiple internal probes against the cop. Yet, Kultar rose through the ranks of the police to become a DIG and also received a medal for meritorious service from the President of India, in 2006.
More than six months before the suicide, AA Siddiqui, the director general of Punjab Police wrote a letter to PS Gill, then the DIG of Amritsar’s Border Range. The letter, dated 11 April 2004, stated that “a reference has been made from the Home Department” that Kultar was indulging in large-scale corruption and land grabbing. Based on reliable inputs, Siddiqui laid out the modus operandi of this corruption in the letter. He asked Gill to make discreet enquiries in this regard and send comments within 15 days.
On 13 August, Siddiqui sent a letter to SK Sinha, the principal secretary to the chief minister, regarding the accusations against Kultar, who was a senior superintendent of police, or SSP, at the time. The letter said that there are reliable inputs for six allegations against Kultar, three of which clearly showed that he was participating and enabling multiple chains of corruption in the police force. The DGP wrote that station-house officers, among others, collected money from “bad elements every month,” and gave it to Kultar as well as other police officers. Another point was that one superintendent, Harmanbir Singh, used to conduct enquiries on rich persons, extort money from them, and give a share to Kultar. Traffic in-charges would pay Kultar every month after collecting money from transporters and presidents of unions, the letter mentioned. Siddiqui wrote that many gazette officers were also “indulging in similar acts and land grabbing with his blessings.”
The letter mentioned there was a rumour that Kultar had taken Rs 12 lakh “through Manjit Singh,” a Congress leader, and an individual called Kittu in connection with a land dispute. Another point that Siddiqui wrote was particularly discomfiting—Kultar had taken about Rs 12 lakh from Gurdev Singh, a petrol pump owner in Amritsar, whose wife had died by suicide. The DGP also listed names and contact details of people who worked as Kultar’s “mediators.” Referring to the letter, Siddiqui told me this year, “Of course, all this was based on duly verified intelligence report.”
Siddiqui had asked the home department to take necessary action in the letter. He recommended—just about two and a half months before the suicide—that Kultar “should be transferred to avoid any further embarrassment.” Had the state government followed this advice, it is possible that Hardeep and his family would have still been alive.
On 31 October, Hardeep’s cousin, Sumit Chawla, discovered the bodies of his family members and called the police. He told me that among the things written in notes was Hardeep’s admission that he had killed his father.
Hardeep and his father, Sunder Singh, used to work with Ayurvedic medicines, according to Chawla. Both of them used to go on outstation work trips, he told me. “When Hardeep was away, his father used to make sexual advances towards his wife,” Chawla said. He told me that during a confrontation about this, Hardeep killed his father. A probe by the Punjab Human Rights Organisation, a non-profit, corroborated Chawla’s account. In a letter to Amarinder Singh, the chief minister in 2005, the PHRO detailed the same sequence of events.
Sunder and Mohinder Singh were two of three brothers whose families lived in the three-storied house at that that time. The PHRO’s letter mentioned that Sunder had died on 11 August 2004 and as Hardeep was disposing off his father’s body, Sabreen Kaur, Mohinder’s daughter-in-law, saw him. Sabreen informed Mohinder of this and they began blackmailing Hardeep. The February 2020 judgment notes that in exchange for not telling the police of the murder, they extorted Rs 7.25 lakhs from Hardeep in three installments and then demanded an additional Rs 3 lakh from him. Further, Parminder Kaur and Palwinder Singh—Hardeep’s sister and her husband—also found out about the murder and began to blackmail him. They demanded over Rs 12 lakh and a car from Hardeep, according to the suicide notes.
Chawla said that the suicide notes he read mentioned Hardeep and his wife eventually went to Kultar’s office to surrender. “But some middlemen there gave them the message that the SSP was offering a deal of closing the case against Hardeep in lieu of sending his wife for a night to him,” Chawla told me. The prosecution in the case in which Kultar was convicted held that he had molested or raped Hardeep’s wife. (However, Kultar was never charged with any sections of the Indian Penal Code which pertain to sexual harassment or rape.)
Kultar and his subordinates continued to make more demands from the family, according to the suicide notes. “Police also started harassing them, extorted Rs 5 lakh and were demanding Rs 7 lakh more,” Chawla said. “This forced Hardeep and his family to take this extreme step.”
According to the judgment, Hardeep had also sent suicide notes to two of his friends as well as Harjinder Singh Thekedar, a member of legislative assembly from the Congress, and one of his sisters, who is based in Canada. Hardev registered a first-information report on 31 October under Sections 306 and 388 of the IPC—abetment of suicide and extortion by threatening with an accusation of an offence that is punishable with death or imprisonment—against Mohinder, Sabreen, Parminder and Palwinderpal.
However, Kultar’s name was absent from the FIR. According to the judgment of the session’s court, Hardev shielded Kultar in the case. Verka, who is also a representative of the PHRO, narrated several instances of how this was done.
Verka said that Hardev—who was the station-house officer of the C Division police station in Amritsar at the time of the suicide—and Kultar’s brother-in-law, Deep, were among the people who reached the scene on 31 October. The SHO struck off Kultar’s name from the suicide notes. Meanwhile, in December 2004, Kultar was posted to Chandigarh.
At several points during the trial, Verka said Kultar and Hardev tried to manipulate the evidence in the case. “At one point of time, we had to move a petition relating to matter of disappearance or removal of all the documentary evidence including exhibit documents from the judicial file of the complaint case,” Verka said. “Judicial file related to evidence against Kultar Singh and other accused also went missing from court record and had to be reconstructed. Certain copies of the judicial files were procured illegally. Police zimmies”—case diaries—“as per a deposing inspector, were destroyed and a zimmi was also fabricated by the accused and other police officers.” Verka claimed that a total of 18 non-bailable warrants were issued against Kultar in the case.
Verka told me that even when the trial was pending, Parminder, Hardeep’s sister, sold off the three-storied house—the site of the suicide. “The complex was a case property, a crime scene for that matter,” Verka said. “The cops not only tampered with the evidence here—the scribbled walls—but even let the prime accused sell it off along with other allies and partners in 2007.” Verka added that Hardeep’s suicide note had mentioned that his assets should be donated to a gurudwara.
The PHRO had written to the government about Kultar’s misconduct at least twice. According to a statement by Verka which is mentioned in the judgment, locals had approached the PHRO’s Ajit Singh Bains, a retired judge, to enquire into the suicide. On 19 January 2005, Bains wrote to Amarinder, the chief minister, that Kultar “abused his position and ran an extortion network in Punjab,” which led to the suicides. Bains mentioned that the PHRO had already presented a report regarding Kultar’s misconduct and crimes to the chief minister. The retired judge wrote that there is “sufficient evidence on the basis of which it will not be difficult to get the accused convicted.”
Bains also mentioned the various attempts Hardev had made to remove all reference to Kultar from the suicide note. According to the letter, Hardeep’s sister had named a relative of Kultar in a statement given to the police—Bains claimed that Kultar got the relative’s name removed as well. Further, the retired judge wrote that Kultar is “threatening the witnesses to keep their mouth shut” by stating that he is “likely to return to Amritsar as DIG.” Almost as if fulfilling this prophetic statement, Kultar was promoted to the rank of a DIG on 15 May 2006.
Several letters show that by the time of the promotion, the Punjab Police had begun probing the many allegations against Kultar. However, Verka alleged, all these probes had been hushed up.
On 22 December 2004, Gill—the DIG of Border Range, Amritsar—wrote a letter to Siddiqui, the DGP, saying that PK Rai, a police superintendent, had been probing the suicide case and the police’s involvement in it. The letter mentioned that Rai had reported that further investigation may require questioning senior police officials and that Gill agreed with this view. Rai had said that the case should be further investigated by “an officer of DIG or above rank.” In January 2005, a special-investigation team was constituted to investigate the matter, headed by Gill and with two superintendents as members. About four months later, Gill wrote to the DGP of Punjab stating that Kultar was indulging in “corruption on large scale.” It is unclear if any action was taken based on his report.
In mid-July 2005, the Punjab government’s home department asked Jasminder Singh, the inspector general of police, to enquire into the allegations against Kultar which were mentioned in the PHRO’s complaint as well as the letter submitted by Siddiqui. By then, Siddiqui had retired and SS Virk had taken took charge as Punjab’s DGP. While the state government had asked Jasminder to submit a report in a month, he was unable to do so. Even in 2008, Jasminder’s inquiry was ongoing as the DGP’s office had not yet given him the documents he needed for his probe. This, despite the department of home sending the DGP office a letter to cooperate with Jasminder’s inquiry in 2007.
When the inquiry was almost complete, Kultar “used his influence” and got it transferred from Jasminder to HS Dhillon, the inspector general (traffic) in Chandigarh, according to Verka’s submission to the court. Verka had filed a petition to the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the transfer, but this was dismissed.
Dhillon’s report said that there is no concrete evidence against Kultar. Jasminder’s submissions to the sessions court indicated that his report would have likely yielded the opposite result—in the sequence of events he listed before the court, Jasminder remarked that the FIR Hardev had registered in the case did not mention “obliteration of suicide notes pertaining to involvement of Kultar Singh … as also the statements, which corroborate involvement of Kultar Singh, other policemen and other people.”
Despite the pending inquiries, Kultar seemed to enjoy the support of the Punjab Police. Multiple officers who appeared to support him faced allegations of corruption themselves.
In 2006, Virk—Siddiqui’s successor—recommended Kultar for a president’s award for meritorious services. Virk described Kultar as a “competent, devoted and dedicated police officer” who had an “unblemished service record.” Kultar won the award and retired on 31 August 2006. In May 2013, DS Bains, the principal secretary of Punjab’s home affairs at the time, wrote to Sanjiv Kalra, the IGP (Security), that Kultar, was “still enjoying the privilege of three gunmen and an official Ambassador Car.” Bains asked for a status report on the security provided to Kultar and a copy of the enquiry against the retired officer, if it had been finalised.
Verka, who doggedly pursued the case, claimed that the top brass of the Punjab Police approached him on various occasions to withdraw the case. He claimed that these officers included Dhillon; Sukhdev Singh, a senior superintendent; and Sumedh Saini, the then director vigilance, who took charge as Punjab’s DGP in 2012. In May 2020, I reported for The Caravan that Saini enjoys the dubious distinction of being singled out by name for human-rights violations in a 2013 report submitted by Christof Heyns—the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions at the time—to the UN Human Rights Council. Saini has been charged under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including those pertaining to criminal conspiracy and murder.
The official documents in the case against Kultar show that had it not been for the PHRO’s efforts, it would have been difficult to solve the case. In 2009, the non-profit filed an application under Section 319 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to the sessions court stating that the police had not solved the case despite constituting multiple inquiries against police officials. The court summoned both Kultar and Hardev in the case in January 2016 and two months later, a trial began against them. They were finally convicted in February this year.
Verka told me that after Hardev and Kultar were released on 28 March, the remaining convicts were also granted parole. “Parminder Kaur and Palwinderpal Singh were out on 17 April, Sabreen Kaur on 20 April and Mohinder Singh on 20 June,” he said. Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, the jails minister of Punjab, told me in the second week of July that more than six thousand prisoners had been released from various jails across the state. “The cases were cleared by a high-powered committee chaired by justice Rakesh Kumar Jain of the Punjab and Haryana High Court,” he said. “Kultar Singh and others in this case have also been released on parole.” Kultar was granted a parole of six weeks which has since been getting repeated extensions of six weeks. “This would continue till the COVID-19 lasts or till the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, is in force,” Randhawa had said.
On 5 June 2020, Verka wrote to the president of India asking him to withdraw the medal awarded to Kultar. “Virk submitted false and incorrect information that no inquiry was pending against Kultar, knowing that inquiry against him for corruption and complicity in suicide case was pending at that time,” Verka told me. And now, even a court had held that Kultar’s tenure in the police was not unblemished.
Siddiqui told me he was happy about the conviction. He added that the case showed how corrupt officials manage to get around the law and be rewarded while facing criminal allegations. “Not only was he promoted but even recommended for a president’s award,” he said. “This only speaks volumes about the system.”