Bihar DSP who killed man in 1998, passed it off as death in encounter, gets life term

PATNA: A deputy superintendent of police (DSP) in Bihar has been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a man who stood up to him during a raid in a Madhepura village in 1998, people familiar with the matter said.
Apart from sentencing DSP Mukhlal Paswan to life in prison, special CBI judge Avinash Kumar also sentenced retired police inspector Arvind Kumar Jha, who was the first investigating officer in the case, to five years imprisonment for fabricating evidence, said Amresh Tiwari, who appeared as the public prosecutor for the CBI.
Paswan was currently posted as DSP special branch in Darbhanga when the court convicted him on September 27. He was subsequently taken into custody after the court’s guilty verdict.
Paswan, who was the officer-in-charge of the Barhara police station at the time of the incident, was accused of shooting Santosh Kumar Singh of Bihariganj at point-blank range on December 12, 1998, during searches being conducted in Jotaily village for suspected criminals. According to Singh’s father Dhirendra Prasad Singh, Mukhlal Paswan led a team of 30-35 police personnel and carried out indiscriminate searches. At one point, the police were carrying out searches at the house of Jagdish Jha where Singh had gone to fetch milk. The accused stopped and abused him, which was protested by Singh. In the course of the argument, the SHO pulled out his service revolver and shot Singh who later succumbed to his injuries.
The Bihar government handed over the case to CBI which registered the FIR on March 16, 2001, and eventually junked the police version that Santosh Kumar Singh sustained a bullet injury during a gunfight between the police team and a notorious criminal Tolwa Singh.