Samana woman acquitted

Conspiracy to kill Dera Sacha Sauda chief

Patiala, December 7
As a local Samana court acquitted the alleged accused in the infamous case of conspiring to kill Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmat Ram Rahim Singh, Samana resident Gurpreet Kaur heaved a sigh of relief.

For this simple 26-year-old village woman, the past three years have been the most horrifying days of her life. Gurpreet Kaur (claimed to be Gobind Kaur by the police), was alleged to be a human bomb and was implicated in a case of trying to kill the dera chief.

“Life will never be the same for me as my married life and my reputation have suffered damage beyond repair,” she said, adding the she was, however, lucky that her family always stood by her side in the hour of need.

Fellow villagers recall Gurpreet Kaur as a typical village girl, who grew up in the village and post-marriage ran a beauty parlour in Samana, when some policemen arrested her in October 2008. "They searched her house and later took her along and the next day, newspapers carried stories that she was a human bomb and was conspiring to kill the dera chief," they said.

Gurpreet says, “My name in the FIR was wrongly mentioned as Gobind Kaur. My certificates and marriage documents confirmed in the court that I am Gurpreet Kaur”. “I am a married woman and a mother of two. I would never do such a thing as was claimed by the police," she said. "My only mistake was that I went to Dera Sacha Sauda a few years ago with my friends," she said.

SK Asthana, the then Patiala SSP, had accepted in a press conference in 2008, that though they had failed to recover anything from the accused, including Bakhshish Singh and Bagicha Singh, "the police believes that Gobind Kaur is a trained human bomb".

The case was the much talked about issue ahead of the parliamentary elections with the Opposition alleging that the police had slapped the case to help the government get support of Dera Sacha Sauda ahead of the elections. Investigating officer in this case Shaminder Singh told TNS that all private witnesses turned hostile.

"The case was genuine, but the witnesses turned hostile and did not support our records," he added.