Haryana’s transport minister Om Prakash Jain and chief parliamentary secretary Zile Ram Sharma, who have been accused of ordering the killing of a former village sarpanch, resigned on the directions of chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
A state government official stated the two functionaries were asked to quit to allow for a fair probe after victim Karam Singh’s family publicly alleged that they were behind the murder in Karnal.
The deceased was found dead outside the Karnal-based National Dairy Research Institute with multiple stab injuries on Tuesday. Following this the local police authorities registered a case of murder against five unidentified assailants.
But the victim’s family insists he was murdered at the behest of the minister and the CPS. “He was killed only hours after he submitted a written complaint to chief minister Bhupinder Hooda against Jain and Zile Ram. His son Rajinder Singh said, “My father left home for Zile Ram’s house on Tuesday morning. Then he called me after sometime and said that he was going to the PWD rest house with Zile Ram’s men. We did not hear from him after that and later the same afternoon the police informed us about his dead body.”
In his complaint to the CM Karam Singh accused the transport minister and the CPS of duping him of `13 Lakhs. He said they had promised to arrange government jobs for his son and two nephews but had instead begun threatening him when he sought his money back after they failed to deliver.
Haryana’s director-general police Mr Ranjeev Dalal said investigations into the death of Karam Singh had been handed over to the police crime branch and would be headed by a senior officer. Incidentally, both Jain and Zile Ram are relative “outsiders” in the Haryana Congress party. While the minister contested and won the 2009 Assembly elections from Panipat as an Independent candidate, Zile Ram won from Assandh as a Haryana Janhit Congress nominee and later defected to join Hooda government.