The Punjab and Haryana High Court has taken suo motu notice of the controversial police encounter in Gurdaspur district that killed 19-year-old Ranjit Singh. The court has directed Punjab DGP Gaurav Yadav to appear via video conferencing on Thursday. Ranjit’s family alleges he was picked up from his home on February 24 and killed in custody.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court’s division bench, comprising Justices Anupinder Singh Grewal and Deepak Manchanda, has intervened in the Gurdaspur encounter case. The court has ordered DGP Gaurav Yadav to appear at 2 pm and file a detailed reply on the sequence of events. The matter will be heard alongside an unrelated case involving gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s jail interview.
On February 22, a double murder occurred at a joint checkpost in Adhian village, just 2 km from the Pakistan border, claiming the lives of Assistant Sub-Inspector Gurnam Singh and Home Guard jawan Ashok Kumar. Police described the attack as an ISI-orchestrated strike, with three youths allegedly paid around Rs 20,000 to execute it. Dilawar Singh was arrested immediately, Inderjit Singh was picked up from Amritsar, and Ranjit Singh was declared killed in an encounter on February 25.
According to police, Ranjit was taken into custody on February 24 and brought to Puranashala for recovery of the murder weapon. He allegedly attempted to flee, fired at the escort party, and injured a senior officer before being shot in retaliation.
Ranjit’s family has rejected this account, claiming he was picked up from his home only for questioning and later killed in custody. They allege the encounter was staged to close the high-profile case quickly, citing the removal of CCTV cameras, and have demanded a proper post-mortem and independent probe. As of Thursday afternoon, his body had not been handed over for last rites.
A Gurdaspur judicial magistrate has issued orders to preserve call records, GPS data of involved officers, and footage from the encounter site, while directing a medical board to check if the police officer’s injury was self-inflicted.
This marks the second recent instance of the high court exercising suo motu powers in a sensitive criminal case; the first concerned the murder of kabaddi promoter Rana Balachauria in Mohali.
Senior police officials maintain the encounter was genuine. The development has sparked political reactions in Punjab, with opposition parties demanding a CBI probe and calling it another example of alleged high-handedness by the state police.