Awaiting justice since 1992

Balwant Singh Multani, a young, vibrant 28 year old, having a degree in civil engineering was working as a junior engineer with Chandigarh Tourism and Industrial Development Cooperation (CITCO) in Chandigarh from May,1989. He was about to be promoted as SDO by December 31, 1991. His father Darshan Singh Multani was an IAS officer, also his uncle was an IAS officer. On December 11, 1991, Balwant was taken into custody by Chandigarh Police at around 4 am from his house in Mohali in a police raid. His life changed rather ended!

He was a suspect of a car bomb blast in which the then SSP of Chandigarh, Mr. Sumedh Saini, was going home with 6 other people in which 5 people died and Mr. Saini and one ASI Ramesh Lal were injured.  FIR was registered under various sections of the IPC, the Explosive Substances Act 1908 and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, to investigate the attack on Saini’s car. Legal documents reveal, a chargesheet was filed against 8 people in connection with the blast:-

Pratap Singh Maan,  Gursharan Kaur Maan,  Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar,  Manmohanjit Singh,  Manjit Singh,  Navneet Singh,  Gurjant Singh Budhsingh Wala,  Balwant Singh Multani.

On 25 May 2006, charges were framed against Devinder, Pratap Singh Mann and Gursharan Kaur under various sections of the IPC which deal with murder, among others, on the grounds that the three had conspired with Navneet, Manjit, Manmohanjit, Gurjant and Balwant to attack Saini.

According to an affidavit filed with the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in August 2007, by the then SSP of Chandigarh, Balwant was arrested on 13 December 1991 and charged under various sections of the IPC, the Arms Act and TADA. The FIR was lodged at the Sector 17 police station in Chandigarh.

As per the affidavit, on 18 December, Balwant was taken to the Qadian police station in Gurdaspur district to search for his co-accused, Navneet. The police records said that Balwant was locked up in the police station but he escaped the next day, on 19 December, 1991. That day, another FIR was filed against Balwant at the Qadian station and he was charged with resisting and escaping arrest. Balwant was subsequently declared a proclaimed offender on 7 July 1993 and has never been traced till date.

His father Darshan Singh Multani, filed a habeas corpus writ petition with the high court in December 1991 only asking that his son Balwant be produced in court. The court dismissed the petition on the state’s claim that Balwant had escaped from the police custody in Qadian and that his whereabouts were unknown. 

Gurjant died in 1992.

Navneet who was declared a Proclaimed offender, was killed in an encounter with the Rajasthan Police in Jaipur on 26 February 1995.

Manjit, who was also picked up by Chandigarh Police in December 1991, surprisingly went missing, too, and has not been traced till now.

Manmohanjit moved to the United States and is still living there.

In 1994, Devinder fled to Germany and sought political asylum. However, in 1995, he was extradited back to India.

Only Devinder Singh, Pratap Singh Mann and Gursharan Kaur were put on trial. But on December 1, 2006, an additional sessions judge who presided over the case, gave the benefit of the doubt to all three of them and acquitted them of all charges.

Further the state appealed to the High Court against the judgment but high court dismissed the state’s appeal. The court further issued another order on directing the state to ensure the presence of the remaining accused who had been declared proclaimed offenders during the trial. It was then the high court gave this case to CBI and directed the CBI to file a status report regarding the proclaimed offenders.

Darshan Singh Multani, Balwant’s father, filed an affidavit in the high court, stating that his son “had been eliminated by the police after being tortured in the year 1991”.

 The CBI’s status report revealed, “He has also claimed that witnesses are available who had seen his son Balwant Singh Multani in custody, but their names will not be disclosed to the investigating agency until their protection is ensured’.

The high court issued another order which said, “It is difficult for us to look over the affidavit of Darshan Singh Multani (retired IAS) regarding accusation/allegation he has made of his son being eliminated. This aspect of elimination must be looked into.”

The court then ordered the CBI to investigate whether Balwant, Navneet and Manjit “were eliminated in false encounters and if so, as to who were/are the police official responsible for it, so that they be brought to justice.” 

On October 2007, the CBI began a preliminary inquiry. Gursharan Kaur, one of the accused (as been made by the police) being a lawyer herself revealed some crucial details, which later on became an eye opener. She became the prime witness in the CBI inquiry and told that Saini had a reputation for using extra-judicial means “to get people eliminated.”

 She revealed that Saini “had kept Balwant Singh Multani’s residence under observation for two to three months” after the bomb blast incident.  The surveillance had been extended to her house since Balwant was a friend of her husband having studied in the same engineering college and had met him in 1991 after a gap of 5-6 years.

She said that she saw Balwant at the Sector 17 police station on 12 December 1991, a day before the police claimed to have arrested him, in an injured state. She told that she, her husband and her 2 yr old son was taken to the sector 11 Police station on the night of December 11 and her husband was subjected to intense torture in front of her even when he didn’t know anything. Saini was sitting there along with a DSP and an SHO and other cops. She added, “The next day, on 12 December, we were taken to Sector 17 police station and there Multani was also present, in a very bad shape, having been subjected to brutal torture. I cannot even describe his state.” She said that on the night of 13 December, “Sumedh Saini came and he kicked Multani, and he and his men savagely tortured him. He was lying on the ground, unable to even stand. Multani was begging Saini to forgive him and there were wails and cries , in the verandah in the morning, he was lying in a very bad state… his eye was popped out and he was bleeding profusely.” According to Gursharan, that day, Balwant was moved from the Sector 17 police station and “we did not know where they took him afterwards. Initially, we were told by the officers that Saini has got to know that we are innocent and that we would be released.”

However, she and her husband were produced in the court on 17 December. “I was released on bail and my husband was sent to jail. My husband was granted bail after two-three months. Gursharan said that she and her husband were then taken to Saini’s office in Sector 9. “He asked my husband how he managed to come out and said that he would kill him. He asked my husband if he knew that he had already eliminated the rest of the guys.”

According to Gursharan, Saini then told them that he had killed Balwant. She said that Saini threatened her husband and told him, “I killed him [Balwant] despite his father and uncle being IAS officers. Do you also want to die?” Gursharan said that her husband was framed in another case and spent four months more in jail. She said that her husband managed to get bail only after Suresh Arora replaced Saini as the SSP.

She said that even after their acquittal in 2006, Saini kept terrorising us and her husband went into depression. The depression was also because if Saini didn’t spare the one whose father was an IAS, then we were nothing in front of him.

Gursharan said,Apart from getting my statement recorded in the latest FIR against Saini, I had also given my statements to the CBI saying that Multani couldn’t even walk or stand due to torture. So, how could he run away from the police custody? She said, “We were heartbroken like countless others when he was promoted as the state DGP. Nobody could even dare to complaint against him while he was heading the state.”

The CBI’s investigation also discredited the police’s version. Moreover, as the inquiry progressed, apart from the three men specified by the high court—Balwant, Navneet and Manjit—the CBI began looking into the disappearance of Balwant Pal Singh Bhullar, Devinder’s father, who, too, had been picked up by the Chandigarh Police in December 1991. A year into the CBI’s inquiry, in 2008, the state of Punjab approached the Supreme Court and won an appeal against the agency’s involvement in the case and the investigation was scrapped. The State wanted to protect its most decorated officer whose crimes were almost exposed by the CBI and CBI’s inquiry showed the reality behind the counter-terrorists operations conducted by the Punjab police from 1980’s to 1990’s.

CBI’s inquiry revealed the FIR against Balwant, was a false FIR. In an affidavit submitted by the CBI to the Supreme Court in November 2008, Balwant was kept in illegal custody till 13 December and then implicated in a false FIR which stated that he had been arrested that day itself. The affidavit further said that Balwant had been tortured in the presence of and under the orders of Saini by the other accused officers—they wanted information on the whereabouts of Devinder. The affidavit stated that Balwant was found in a bad condition in Sector 17 police station on 17 December and was taken to Qadian the next day.

In addition, the CBI pointed out that as per the FIR, Balwant had admitted his involvement in the attack on Saini “but he was never interrogated in the bomb blast case.” The CBI’s inquiry also stated that Balwant “was badly tortured during custody by the Chandigarh Police and his escape from the custody is also doubtful because of serious discrepancies in the statements of the concerned police officials of Chandigarh Police as well as of PS Qadian.” The CBI also submitted that it was incorrect that Balwant was a proclaimed offender in several cases.

Later on July 2008, the CBI had registered an FIR against Sumedh Singh Saini, Baldev Singh Saini (DSP Chandigarh), Harsahai Sharma and Jagir Singh (sub inspectors at that time). They were charged with Abduction and murder of Balwant Singh Multani. There were 70 witnesses whose statements were recorded.

After CBI submitted its report, the High Court accepted the report and directed the agency to investigate further into the matter and look whether he had been eliminated in false encounter.

The then Shromani Akali Dal government had approached the Apex court claiming that Saini being one of its most decorated officers and was honest, hardworking and took extreme steps to curb terrorism in Punjab. A technical legal weapon was used against the High court’s judgment as High Court had gone beyond its power in asking CBI to hold an inquiry into the administration’s appeal against the acquittal of the 3 accused, making the court’s actions legally impermissible and unsustainable.

Later on 7 December 2011, the Supreme Court allowed the State’s appeal and declared the High Court’s order null and Void. Hence, the FIR was quashed. However, it was written in that last paragraph of the judgment that ‘it is open to the applicants who had filed the petition to take recourse to fresh proceedings, if permissible in law’.

This sole statement now has given a fresh hope to the family of Balwant Singh Multani to get justice for their beloved son. His father, Darshan Singh Multani died but never lost hope.  Even during his last days, he said that he will fight for his son till his last breath.

On December 14, 2015,  Gurmeet Singh Pinky, one of the officers involved in the entire incident revealed in an interview to the ‘Outlook Magazine’ in the article “Confessions of a killer cop” that Saini, in his presence, facilitated and got inserted a wooden stick in the rectum of Balwant Singh Multani, and was also administered electric shocks on his testicles. Multani could not withstand the sustained torture and succumbed to his injuries on 17 December 1991.

On May 2020, when Saini is no more powerful, (he’s retired) Balwant Singh Multani’s real brother Palwinder Singh Multani has filed a fresh FIR against Sumedh Singh Saini, accusing him of kidnapping his brother. On August 2020, the charge of murder was also added. The family still awaits justice. Let us hope that this time rather than the ugly politics and power the truth shall prevail.