RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, June 28: The Jharkhand High Court today directed the state home secretary Rajeev Arun Ekka to appear before the court within 24 hours to let the court know about the steps taken by the state government to give protection to witnesses of the different cases.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Dr Ravi Ranjan and Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad issued the directive while hearing a case with regards to the murder of a witness Manpreet Singh in Jamshedpur.
The advocate appearing on behalf of the state government told the court that sufficient arrangements had been made for the protection of witnesses but the court expressed its dissatisfaction over the reply. “How come a witness got killed when the sufficient arrangement was done,” the court asked.
Manpreet Singh, a young man from Jamshedpur’s Sidhgora, was slain after he returned home from a court hearing. The killer broke open his door and shot him dead in front of his mother in Jamshedpur. According to her mother, she kept on calling the police for 30 minutes but no one turned up to her rescue.
Sidhgora police have registered an FIR against Rahul Singh, Akshay Singh, Puran Choudhary, Gaurav Gupta and Naveen on the information of Soni Kaur, Manpreet’s mother.
Singh was a witness to a shootout in the case. He was contacted by the accused and asked not to testify in the case as a witness. Manpreet did not pay heed to the threats and ended up being shot dead in his own home.
Three armed assailants shot dead 22-yr-old Singh in his house at Post Office Road in Shiv Singh Bagan area of Sidhgora around 4.30 pm on June 8. He was about to go back to Punjab where he pursued higher education. Assailants pumped several bullets into his body to eliminate him. The sensational incident evoked sharp criticism from the Sikh community as many citizens blamed police for the lawlessness.
