CHANDIGARH: A division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, comprising Justice R.P. Sethi and Justice S.S. Sudhalkar, has directed the Punjab government to furnish details of all the cases registered against Akali Dal (Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann before February 16.
Besides, the court last week issued notice of motion to the state of Punjab, chief minister Beant Singh police chief K.P.S. Gill in the writ petition filed by Mann seeking quashing of all the FIRS lodged against him. He alleged that these had been registered at the behest of Beant Singh and Gill to settle scores with him.
Mann’s counsel Ranjan Lakhanpal contended that when his client was arrested on January 5, three FIRS were reported to have been registered against him in Fatehgarh Sahib. Though he was released to bail in all these cases, he continued to be behind bars as the police had dug up four other cases against him- one of these had been registered way back in 1992. Lakhanpal contended that Mann was “being harassed because Beant Singh’s grandson Gurkirat Singh had to remain behind bars for more than two months primarily because of the public interest litigation writ filed by Mann seeking transfer of the case of alleged molestation of French national Katia Darnad in which Gurkirat Singh was an accused.
Besides, Gill was irked at Mann’s move to challenge the illegal extension granted to him by the Union government. “This was the reason,” Lakhanpal argued, “why Mann was handcuffed when produced before the judicial magistrate in Ludhiana on January 30.”
Article extracted from this publication >> February 10, 1995
