IPS Officer’s Kin Claim Bid to Cover-up Suicide

Hyderabad: If the death by suicide of IPS officer Y. Puran Kumar in Chandigarh on Tuesday shattered his family, the attempts to hush up the case by the Haryana police which he served for more than two decades is adding to their sorrow.

It was only 48 hours after the 2001-batch IPS officer was suspected to have died by suicide, that the police late on Thursday night said they had registered an FIR based on the complaint of his wife Amneet P. Kaur, an IAS officer. The postmortem had not been conducted, leaving the family members waiting to receive Puran Kumar’s body and perform last rites.

“That is the least respect Kumar deserves for the selfless service he rendered and the values for which he fought,” his elder brother Vikram told Deccan Chronicle.

Natives of Hyderabad, Kumar’s parents lived in Barkatpura for a long time before the siblings moved out. Vikram, who resides in Mumbai, rushed to Chandigarh on hearing of the tragedy.

“The Haryana Chief Minister (Nayab Singh Saini) visited our house today and assured us of justice and we hope at least now things will move,” he said. “We were told that the police took away all the evidence including the letters written by my brother explaining in detail the wrong doings of his superiors,” he said.

The police showed the family members a photocopy of Puran Kumar’s letter which was also later taken away.

Kumar’s wife Amneet Kumar had to struggle for justice because the forces the senior IAS official had to fight against were more powerful, sources said. She was accompanying the Chief Minister on his tour to Japan tour when the suicide took place and she rushed immediately.

The mystery around the suspected suicide had deepened with a 'final note' he left behind naming senior officers, and his bureaucrat wife asking for an FIR against the state police chief, Director General of Police Shatrujeet Kapur.

The ‘final note’ also and detailed “mental harassment” and “humiliation” he faced over the past few years, according to sources.

Puran Kumar, 52, a 2001-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, was found with a gunshot wound in a room in the basement of his Sector 11 house on Tuesday.

Known for his interventions in matters related to the rights of officers and seniority, Puran Kumar was recently posted as Inspector General of the Police Training Centre (PTC) in Rohtak's Sunaria.

His wife Amneet Kumar claimed in a police complaint that her husband's death was the result of “systematic persecution” by high-ranking officers. She requested an FIR against DGP Shatrujeet Kapur and another senior IPS officer, under Section 108 BNS, 2023 (abetment of suicide) and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Both officers could not be reached on the phone despite attempts, PTI reported.

In her police complaint, Amneet Kumar said that her husband, who came from the Scheduled Caste community, was an officer of unimpeachable integrity and extraordinary public spirit.

Physical and electronic evidence, including the weapon Puran Kumar allegedly, was seized by a team from the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh police said on Tuesday.

Sources said that Kumar left an eight-page typed and signed 'final note', which he titled “Continued blatant caste based discrimination, targeted mental harassment, public humiliation and atrocities by concerned senior officers of Haryana since August 2020 which is now unbearable.”

The note alleged caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, targeted mental harassment, and atrocities the officer was subjected to, the sources said, according to PTI.

It mentions a “mala fide generation of mischievous anonymous and pseudo-anonymous” complaints against him, floated and processed by some officers for months together to publicly humiliate and embarrass him and damage his reputation, they said.

Puran Kumar named a few officers who allegedly misused their official positions and authority, and compelled him to kill himself, according to sources.

Despite complaints against the officers, they were not investigated, the letter claims, sources said.

Amneet Kumar's complaint read, “This is not a case of ordinary suicide but a direct result of systematic persecution of my husband-an officer from SC community by powerful and high-ranking officers who have used their positions to mentally torture him, ultimately driving him to such an extent that he was left with no other option but to take his life.”

She alleged that the death was caused by the powerful and it has shattered her family.

“My children deserve answers. My husband's decades of public service deserves dignity, not silence,” she said.

Puran Kumar's 'final note' mentioned an instance where a bureaucrat, now retired, did not sanction his earned leave on time, due to which he could not visit his father before his death.

It says that he raised these issues before many officers, “which are a matter of record,” sources said.

The note alleges that some officers left no stone unturned in harassing him by their “discriminatory, caste based mental harassment and humiliation in public view.”

“... I thought over carefully and was convinced and I cannot bear this continued and concerted conspiracy to continue with caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, targeted mental harassment and atrocities any longer and hence this final decision to end it all,” the ‘final note’ read, according to the sources.

Puran Kumar alleged that no action was taken when he complained against a fellow officer, “which clearly is proof of prejudicial treatment against me.”

He alleged that a top-ranking IPS officer from the state made certain comments in his annual performance appraisal report for the period ending March 31, 2024, which were “factually incorrect, purely imaginary, unsubstantiated, loaded with his personal prejudice and in violation of principles of natural justice.” He says he even approached a senior bureaucrat requesting him to intervene, but in vain, PTI quoting sources said.