The wife of the Haryana IPS officer who died by suicide has filed a police complaint against the Director General of Police, which is the highest-ranking officer in the police force of a state, and a senior cop for subjecting her husband to “caste-based slurs”.
The late officer’s wife, Amneet P Kumar, an Indian Administrative Service officer, has named DGP Shatrujeet Singh Kapur and Narendra Bijarnia, Superintendent of Police in Rohtak, for abetment to suicide. She said the officers should also be charged under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Amneet, the commissioner and secretary of the Haryana government’s Department of Foreign Cooperation, was in Japan as part of a delegation led by Chief Minister Nayab Saini when her husband, Y Puran Kumar, died by suicide at their Sector 11 Chandigarh residence by shooting himself.
Police said the officer allegedly shot himself with his service revolver, and his body was found by his daughter in the basement.
An eight-page note recovered by the police details the harassment. Y Puran Kumar, a 2001-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, accused 10 senior officers, serving and retired, of “mental harassment” in the note.
The late officer’s wife said both officers -Shatrujeet Singh Kapur and Narendra Bijarnia – should be arrested immediately as they are powerful and hold influential posts and will “make all efforts to manage the situation in their favour, hampering investigation, including tampering of the evidences and influencing witnesses”.
“I am not only pleading for my family, but for the value of every honest officer’s life and dignity. This is not a case of ordinary suicide but a direct result of systematic persecution of my husband – an officer from SC community by powerful and high-ranking officers who have used their positions to mentally torture him, ultimately driving him to such an extent that he was left with no other option but to take his life,” she said in her complaint.
“While official narratives suggest suicide, my soul cries for justice as a wife witnessing years of systematic humiliation, harassment and persecution inflicted upon my husband by senior officials,” she said further
The eight-page suicide note is a “document of broken spirit,” the late officer’s wife said, adding that the note “lays bare the names of numerous officers whose relentless actions pushed him to the edge.”
“Justice should not merely be done, but seen to be done – even for families like ours, shattered by the cruelty of the powerful. My children deserve answers. My husband’s decades of public service deserve dignity, not silence,” she said.
The late officer was reportedly disturbed over the inclusion of his name in a bribery case on the complaint of a liquor contractor without the permission of the state government.
The Rohtak Police on Monday registered a first information report (FIR) based on a complaint by the liquor contractor, who alleged that Kumar’s aide Sushil Kumar had sought a bribe of Rs 2.5 lakh in the officer’s name. While the police had arrested Sushil, Y Puran Kumar’s name figured in the FIR.
On September 29, Kumar, a 2001-batch officer, was transferred to the Police Training College in Sunaria in Rohtak. Previously, he was posted as the Inspector General (Rohtak Range).
An engineering graduate, he was born on May 19, 1973, and was due to retire on May 31, 2033.