KHARAR: When 84yearold Raunaq Singh Mander walked into the Kharar police station last week he had no idea why he had been called there. Little did he know that the courts had finally acted on his complaint against high profile IAS officer Rupan Bajaj and her husband regarding a land dispute dating back to 1988? Suddenly in the public eyes as a result of the controversial Gill Bajaj case where his case found mention, this frail old man from Daon village could barely remember what it was all about. And when SHO of Kharar police station Rajinder Singh spoke of his complaint against the Bajaj couple, two of their relatives and four others, he was still unfazed.

Raunaq Singh had alleged to the police that they had forcibly entered his house on December 11, 1995 and threatened him to withdraw his civil suit against them. The suit, filed in the Kharar court, was to set aside a “fake” land deed. The police, however, had not taken any action. The land dispute was forgotten until last week when the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Kharar police to register an FIR against the Bajajs and the others named in the complaint. Now, Raunaq Singh was running a high temperature. But he listened to the SHO patiently, answered all his queries and finally agreed to bring all the court documents regarding his civil suit. But the police are yet to register an FIR as the court orders hadn’t reached the station.

Later, while speaking to newsperson, it all seemed to come back to Raunaq. He said he had filed a case against Rupan Bajaj’s father Iqbal Singh Deol for having tricked him to usurp his land, measuring three acres and eight Marlas. Raunaq alleged that Iqbal Singh faked a land deed showing he had bought the land from one Balwinder Kaur, all along claiming that Balwinder was Raunaq’s wife. But Raunaq said he was a widower and Balwinder was an imposter. So he filed a civil suit against the sale deed at Kharar and also registered a case of forgery at Chandigarh against Iqbal Singh

Deol and Balwinder Kaur on May 20, 1988. Iqbal Singh Deol died recently.

Rupan Bajaj, however, denies it all. “I do not know why the complaint about us was kept a secret and was only divulged by the defence lawyers in the Gill case,” she said. Rupan claimed Balwinder was indeed Raunaq’s wife and the wedding was in accordance with a “Karewa” ceremony (marriage with a widower/widow), which was endorsed by the village panchayat. Raunaq Singh, she said, had given the land to Balwinder as a wedding gift. And Balwinder sold it to her father through a registered sale deed, Rupan added. She said later Raunaq turned on Balwinder from his house and filed a case against six persons including her father who had bought the land. Rupan also alleged that five of the seven who were witness to the marriage had been murdered.

“How can we threaten a person when we were already under tremendous pressure due to the case involving the former Punjab police chief? The property dispute was the last thing on my mind during the past few years,” she said. But now with the court ordering an FIR against her, the land dispute case has come back to haunt Rupan Bajaj.

Article extracted from this publication >>  August 14, 1996