Jailed former Punjab woman minister gets VIP treatment

Jailed former Punjab woman minister gets VIP treatment

Former Punjab cabinet minister Jagir Kaur, convicted and arrested on Friday evening, continues to wield political influence even as a prisoner of law.
Video footage emerging from Patiala and Kapurthala jails clearly shows that Kaur, who was convicted of criminal conspiracy and other charges in the mysterious death of her 19-year-old daughter Harpreet Kaur in April 2000 and sent to jail, was getting VIP treatment.
A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court in Patiala on Friday sentenced Jagir Kaur to five years rigorous imprisonment on counts of forcible abortion, wrongful confinement, abduction and criminal conspiracy. She was absolved of the charges of murder of her daughter. Three others were also convicted by the court in the case.
Jagir Kaur , who was forced to resign as Punjab’s minister for rural water supply and sanitation and defence services after her conviction and arrest, was accompanied out of the packed courtroom by police officials.
“It appeared that the police officials were escorting and guarding her from the crowd and media rather than taking her away as a convicted criminal,” a lawyer said.
She was led into a waiting air-conditioned luxury car to be taken to the Patiala central jail.
Within hours of her being sent to the jail, her request to be transferred to the Kapurthala central jail, nearly 200km from Patiala, was “promptly” acceded to. Jagir Kaur, who is head of a cash-rich “dera” (sect) in Begowal village, belongs to the district.
Jagir Kaur was, late Friday night, driven under police escort, which looked more like a ministerial convoy rather than being that of a convicted criminal, in another white-coloured private air-conditioned luxury car. In the car, she was accompanied by only one woman police official seated next to her.
Her Innova car was allowed to be driven straight inside the Kapurthala jail complex where police officials in uniform and other jail officials in plainclothes were waiting for her arrival.
To top it all, one official in plainclothes and a uniformed officer bent to touch her feet as she alighted from the car in her trademark white salwar-kameez and a cotton dupatta over her head.
Former Congress legislator Sukhpal Singh Khaira, whom Jagir Kaur had recently defeated in the assembly election from the Bholath seat in Kapurthala, yesterday demanded the dismissal of the police officials who touched the feet of Jagir Kaur and sought a probe into the VIP treatment being extended to the former minister after her conviction and arrest.
“Video footage shows jail officials, in uniform and civil clothes, shamelessly touching her feet. I understand that she has been extended the facility of a special darbar inside the jail where people can meet her. All this is happening on the directions of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. There should be an inquiry and these officials should be sacked,” Khaira said.
Raising questions over shifting Jagir Kaur from Patiala to the Kapurthala jail, Khaira said the rules were being openly circumvented at the behest of the Badal government to give VIP treatment to Jagir Kaur.
He said justice could only be done if she is shifted to a jail outside Punjab and treated like any other convicted criminal.