|
Chandigarh, Feb 19 (IANS) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Tuesday conducted searches at residences of two sitting Haryana legislators in connection with the murder case of a former village headman. The searches were conducted at the residences of legislators O.P. Jain and Zile Ram Sharma at Chandigarh, Panchkula, Karnal and Panipat. Jain was Haryana's transport and tourism minister earlier while Sharma was a chief parliamentary secretary (CPS). Jain's residences were searched in Chandigarh and Panipat while Sharma's residences were searched in Karnal and Panchkula. The two had been booked by the police June 2011 following the murder of village headman (sarpanch) Karam Singh near Karnal town, 120 km from here. His body, with stab wounds was found near the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI). Just a day before his murder, the village headman, who was in his late 50s, had submitted a written complaint to Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and police against Jain and Sharma about a fraud committed on him. Karam Singh had accused the duo of duping him of nearly Rs.13 lakh on the pretext of providing government jobs to his son and two nephews. But they neither provided the jobs nor returned the money, his complaint had said. Both Jain and Sharma were forced to resign in June 2011. Incidentally, a witness to the death of Karam Singh, Chamail Singh, was too found dead under mysterious circumstances just a week later. Terming the Haryana Police investigation into the murder case "shoddy", the Punjab and Haryana High Court had, August last year, handed over the investigation to the CBI. The Haryana Police had given a "clean chit" to both leaders, who were part of the Hooda government, and was trying to pass off the murder as a case of suicide. --Indo-Asian News Service js/vd
| 
