Police claim body was identified by NRI hotelier’s brother, friend
Friday, 09/10/2015
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JALANDHAR: The family of Punjab-born UK hotelier Ranjit Singh Power (54), which claimed the body that the Jalandhar police sent to Britain was not his, had earlier sought his death certificate from the police.
The police had received a letter on July 1 in which the family claimed that Power’s mother Gurmeet Kaur was 82-year-old and was unable to move to India to give a DNA sample.
The police have already filed a chargesheet in the case against one of arrested accused taxi driver, Sukhdev Singh, a distant nephew of the main accused, Baldev Singh Deol, who is absconding and living in the UK.
The police claimed before shifting body to Wolverhampton, Power’s British non-resident Indian (NRI) friend Darshan Singh on and brother Amrik had identified body from a steel bracelet on the body on June 6.
Additional deputy commissioner of police-2 Amrik Singh Powar said: “Power’s brother had recognised the body and now they have sent a report claiming that the body sent to the UK was not of the NRI, which is surprising.”
He also confirmed that the family had sought the hotelier’s death certificate from the police and they were asked to contact the Ambala police as his partially decomposed body was fished out from a canal in Ambala.
“We are again writing to them through a proper channel with a request seeking the DNA sample of Power’s mother,” the ADCP added.
On October 5, an email about the body report came to the police from British High Commission through the Indian embassy in the UK
On October 5, an email about the body report came to the police from the British High Commission through the Indian embassy in the UK, which stated that Power was under dental treatment in the UK and the specifications of his jaw did not match with the jaw on the body sent to Britain by police.
On May 18, the hotelier’s brother Amrik had told the police that Power had gone to Punjab for a business deal with his British NRI friend Baldev Singh Deol, who belonged to Shekhewal village.
Power was to return to the UK on May 14. He didn’t make it back but Deol did on May 15. On Amrik’s complaint, a case against Deol was registered here under Section 365 (kidnapping with the intent to confine) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Call details of Deol, who had arrived in India on February 13, led a special investigation team (SIT) of the police to Deol’s distant nephew, Sukhdev Singh of Manikpur village near Shahkot, and it came to light that a week before the hotelier had arrived in Amritsar on May 8, Deol and Sukhdev had plotted to kill him.
On May 8, the two accused had reached the Amritsar airport at 3.30pm to pick up Power in a Toyota Innova car and take him to the Golden Temple. After buying liquor, they started from Amritsar at 6pm and reached Nakkia village near Anandpur Sahib around 11pm, where they made the hotelier drink so much that it knocked him out.
They allegedly put a polyethene bag over his face and strangulated him with a rope. Later, the body was stripped and thrown into the Bhakra canal along with the NRI’s clothes.
