A sessions court convicted one man for possessing demonetised currency worth ₹ 25,500, imposing a fine of ₹ 1 lakh five times the recovered amount while acquitting him and two others of charges linked to a 2017 attack on a lawyer, citing doubts over identification and gaps in forensic evidence.
One of the occupants allegedly tried to hit him with an iron rod, while another fired two shots. Singh escaped and reached the judicial complex. Police later arrested Gurtej Singh, Varinder Singh and Jaspreet Singh alias Bamba. The court found that Singh’s initial statement, recorded on the day of the incident, neither named the assailants nor provided descriptions sufficient to identify them. He named the accused about four months later and subsequently gave details, including the car’s registration number and his claim that he recognised one attacker after the man’s face covering fell.
A white Swift car stopped in front of Singh’s scooter, according to the prosecution.
Additional sessions judge Navdeep Kaur Gill pronounced the judgment in a case concerning an attack on advocate Harkishan Singh near the Dera Radha Swami Satsang Beas branch in Mohali on May 26, 2017. The court imposed a fine of ₹ 1,27,500 and ordered four months’ simple imprisonment in default of payment. The court also noted that two empty cartridges recovered from the scene were never sent for forensic examination to establish whether they had been fired from the pistol recovered from Varinder. The forensic laboratory found that the suspected hole in Singh’s scooter seat had not been caused by a firearm projectile.
“The most material link connecting the weapon of offence with the actual occurrence is, therefore, conspicuously absent,” the court observed. Varinder told the court that he was a first-time offender, was unaware that retaining the notes was an offence and had no intention of using them.
