Phagwara, 11 October, 2024: A Punjab Police inspector, Jatinder Kumar, and his driver, Jaskaran Singh, were arrested by the Vigilance Bureau (VB) on Friday while accepting a ₹50,000 bribe. Kumar, the station house officer (SHO) of Phagwara city police station in Kapurthala district, and Singh, a resident of Burj Hamira village in Moga, were taken into custody following a complaint.
The complaint came from Kulwinder Kaur of Chachoki village, who accused the SHO of repeatedly demanding money from her family. According to her, Kumar’s team had detained her son, Harshdeep Singh, his wife Ashima, and his brother-in-law Ansh Sharma during a March incident, and later filed a Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) case against her son.
Kaur alleged that Kumar initially sought ₹50,000 to keep Harshdeep’s wife and brother-in-law out of the case. She also claimed Kumar demanded an additional ₹50,000 to return Harshdeep’s phone and jewelry, which had been seized as case evidence. The demands didn’t stop, as the SHO later asked for ₹40,000 to cover his personal nursery bills and ₹1 lakh to file a favorable challan in court. A final bribe of ₹50,000 was agreed upon.
VB officials, acting on the complaint, set up a trap and caught Kumar and Singh accepting the bribe near a sugar mill on the Jalandhar-Ludhiana highway. A case has been registered, and further investigation is ongoing.
