Ex-DGP Saini: From most powerful to most wanted, with six police teams on his heels

Saini, a 1982-batch IPS officer who is idolised and reviled in equal measure for his tough policing and alleged strong-arm methods during the years of militancy in Punjab, is wanted in a 29-year-old murder case.

On Saturday, even as a Mohali court issued an arrest warrant against Sumedh Singh Saini, former DGP of Punjab, it had been 17 days since the 1982-batch IPS officer had been on the run, leaving behind his Z-plus security and a trail of unanswered questions.

Saini, a 1982-batch IPS officer who is idolised and reviled in equal measure for his tough policing and alleged strong-arm methods during the years of militancy in Punjab, is wanted in a 29-year-old murder case.

Saini was Chandigarh SSP in 1991 when he allegedly orchestrated the abduction, torture, disappearance and murder of junior engineer Balwant Singh Multani, son of a serving IAS officer of that time.

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A terrorist attack in 1991 targeting Saini had left him injured and three policemen dead, and, according to the police chargesheet, Saini believed that Multani knew the whereabouts of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, the terrorist he suspected to be behind the attack. Bhullar is at present undergoing life imprisonment in a 1993 Delhi bomb blast case.

Denying him anticipatory bail on Tuesday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had warned that if he is not arrested, Saini could stifle the probe as he was a “law unto himself” who could end up “intimidating the judicial process”. On Saturday, the sessions court in Mohali, while issuing the arrest warrant, directed police to produce Saini in court before September 25. On September 10, Saini moved the Supreme Court, seeking anticipatory bail in the case.

In 2012, Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch and then CM Parkash Singh Badal chose Saini as state DGP in 2012, making him the state’s youngest DGP. It was a curious choice, considering Saini is often accused of using extra-judicial methods to crush militancy in Punjab — then CM Beant Singh is known to have given Saini and then DGP K P S Gill a free hand.

Before he became DGP, the Akali-BJP government appealed to the Supreme Court against a Punjab and Haryana High Court order that sought a probe into Multani’s disappearance, while defending Saini as one of its most decorated officers. The apex court allowed the state government’s appeal in December 2011, and quashed the case registered by the CBI.

Saini had famously superseded four senior officers for the top job but had to step down in 2015, after two people were killed in police firing while protesting against the sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib at Bargari.

Last week, the SIT probing the case told the Faridkot trial court that Saini and then Ludhiana police commissioner P S Umranangal were the “masterminds” in the police firing case.

Besides the Multani case, Saini is accused of another case of disappearance, for which he faces trial in a Special CBI court in Delhi.

On March 15, 1994, Ludhiana-based businessman Vinod Kumar, his brother-in-law Ashok Kumar, and their driver, Mukhtiar Singh, were abducted and illegally detained, allegedly at Saini’s behest. Saini, it is alleged, had a tussle with the owners of a car dealership and the Ludhiana businessmen were financing that dealership.

While the families of the victims suspect the three were killed, their bodies were never found. For 23 years, till her death at the age of 102 in 2017, Vinod’s mother fought the case.

It was during Saini’s stint as Vigilance Bureau Director that Captain Amarinder Singh faced the Ludhiana City Centre scam and the Amritsar Improvement Trust cases.

Now a fugitive, Saini is being chased by six police parties, each headed by a Deputy Superintendent of Police. They have so far raided his properties in Chandigarh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi, without any success. Police also raided Saini’s ancestral village Kurala Kalan in Hoshiarpur district, but drew a blank.

Even as the clamour for his arrest continues to grow, senior police officers say it’s no wonder that Saini, who knows the system only too well, has managed to stay a step ahead of the rest.