Key accused yet to join probe in Thapar varsity student's murder in 2010

PATIALA: Two police probes and four and a half years later, cops are still investigating whether Thapar University student Gagandeep Singh Bains was killed in cold blood by his classmate, son of the then Patiala sub-divisional magistrate, or he died in a car accident. Even six months after Patiala police had registered a fresh case under Section 302 (murder) of IPC against accused Zorawar Singh on directions of Supreme Court, the accused is yet to join the investigation.Sources said that Zorawar had moved to Canada.
"We had registered a fresh murder case on directions of the Supreme Court and investigation is on. Zorawar has not yet joined the probe. We will take further action as per law after waiting for him for next couple of days," said Patiala superintendent of police (detective) Jaskiranjit Singh Teja, who is investigating the case.
On the night of September 27, 2010, the SUV, in which victim Gagandeep, a student of MBA, and accused Zorawar, were travelling with two other friends Gaurav Verma and Jaskaran Singh hit a stationery truck near Rajpura town of Patiala district. Gagandeep and Gaurav had died in the accident. Police had then claimed that both victims had died due to injuries suffered in the roadside accident and had registered a case of negligent driving against driver and cleaner of the truck. However, what gave a new turn of events to the entire case, was courage and determination of victim's lawyer father Gurbux Singh Bains, who after finding several lacunae in the police theory, approached Punjab and Haryana high court.
Gurubux became suspicious when he found that his son Gagandeep's body was recovered from under the wheel of the SUV. He also reportedly installed CCTV cameras in his house and recorded his conversations with both Zorawar and Jaskaran survivors of the accident and found several inconsistencies in their versions about the accident.
After repeated representations by victim's father, the Punjab government had in December 2011 ordered the senior IPS office Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh to conduct probe into the incident, who concluded that Gagandeep was murdered. However, the state police didn't accept Kunwar's report and constituted a special investigation team (SIT), only to disband it later. Acting on Bains's petitions, the high court had ordered to register murder case against the accused in 2012. Meanwhile, the accused approached the apex court against high court's decision. However, the Supreme Court dismissed the plea in the first week of December 2014 and directed Patiala police to register a case of murder against Zorawar.