BATHINDA, July 8 -- A district court on Tuesday framed murder charges against five Punjab Police personnel, including an inspector, in connection with the alleged custodial death of a man in October 2024. Additional district and sessions judge, Balwinder Kumar, ordered that the accused will stand trial on charges of murder, destruction of evidence, providing false information to shield offenders and forging electronic evidence. A detailed order is awaited. The accused are then CIA-1 in-charge Inspector Navpreet Singh, head constable Rajwinder Singh, and constables Gaganpreet Singh, Harjit Singh and Jaswinder Singh, all of whom were posted with the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA)-1 unit in Bathinda at the time of the incident. The matter has been posted for November 27, when evidence against the accused will be produced before the trial court. The case stems from the death of Bhinder Singh, a resident of Lakhi Jungle village in Bathinda, who died under suspicious circumstances in October 2024. According to the allegations, Bhinder was picked up by the CIA-1 team on October 17, 2024, in connection with a case involving the alleged possession of an illegal weapon. At the time, Bathinda police claimed Bhinder drowned after jumping into a lake of the defunct Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Power Plant on the city's periphery, while trying to evade arrest by a CIA team. On October 17, 2014, then CIA in-charge Navpreet deposited the body of Bhinder at the Shaheed Bhai Mani Singh Civil Hospital. As per the daily diary report (DDR) recorded at the thermal police station, the CIA team was looking for Bhinder's brothers Satnam Singh and Baljinder Singh, who were accused of a crime reported in 2021. Police records state that the CIA personnel learnt about the possible movement of one person identified as Billa and Bhinder, who was wanted in cases registered at Nehianwala police station near the thermal plant lake. "Inspector Navpreet, along with the police party, reached near the thermal plant lakes where they spotted Billa and Bhinder. Seeing the police party, Bhinder jumped into the lake while the other accused fled from the spot on his motorcycle. The inspector, with the help of the police party, tried to rescue him (Bhinder) and took him out of the water. He (Bhinder) was taken to a civil hospital, where he was declared dead. The body was deposited in the mortuary of the civil hospital, Bathinda," the record further reads. However, the deceased's brother, Satnam Singh, alleged otherwise and wrote to the sessions judge, Ferozepur, alleging that his brother was "illegally detained, interrogated, and tortured to death by the police" after which the complaint was forwarded to Bathinda district and the sessions judge for an inquiry. A fact-finding inquiry conducted by then Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMIC) Kuldeep Singh examined forensic evidence, official records and medical testimony to reject the police's drowning theory. The report concluded that Bhinder had been subjected to waterboarding-a torture technique that simulates drowning by pouring water into a person's nose and mouth-and was kept in illegal custody. The judicial inquiry report, submitted in February 2025, indicted all five police personnel, paving the way for prosecution. The report also stated that the CIA team kept Bhinder in illegal custody, and then they tried to fabricate the alleged murder as an accidental drowning. The report found that the call detail records (CDR) of the mobile phone of the deceased and inspector Navpreet were active at Buladewala village at around the same time on the evening of October 17. The probe also highlighted a delay in an autopsy by concluding that "it appears that a delay of two days in conducting the post-mortem was due to the allegations and police trying to make the family members furnish a statement favourable to CIA-1."...