JAMMU: The family members of a 39-year-old man, who was killed in a land dispute here at Greater Kailash locality on April 30, wished that the investigation in their case is not transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). According to them, a senior bureaucrat has been forcing the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir to transfer the investigation in their case to the Central agency in order to save the skin of his relatives and aides. “Let us categorically state this that we’re against transferring the case to CBI as we’ve complete faith in the Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, DGP RR Swain, ADGP Anand Jain, SSP Jammu Vinod Kumar, and Kartik Shrotriya, the officer heading the SIT in our case,” they said. “The transfer of the case to CBI means an easy escape route for the big fishes involved in the land grabbing business,” they further said. Senior Congress leader Taranjit Singh Tony, the person authorised by the family members of the deceased to speak on their behalf, said that the influential senior bureaucrat has been actually running the land grabbing racket by involving some people in the business. “This influential bureaucrat has been also trying to get the notorious land grabber Ravinder Gupta alias Gola Shah booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in order to help him easily escape from the clutches of the law,” Tony said, while demanding that the land grabber be tried under the relevant sections of the IPC only. He alleged that Ravinder Gupta has also illegally occupied the land of a temple to construct his palatial bungalow. “This too should be probed by the law enforcement agencies,” he demanded. Asked whether demarcation of the land being conducted by the administration has confirmed ownership of any of the party in dispute, Tony said: “This is not the right time to answer this question as the matter is under investigation.” Meanwhile, in a startling revelation, the brother of the deceased Avtar Singh claimed that prior to the killing, his brother was receiving continuous death threats from the land grabbers and that police knew about such threats. “These threats were written on the gate of the dispute property and police knew about such threats. Had they acted on time, life of my brother could have been saved,” he asserted.
