- The action comes after the late IPS officer's wife filed a police complaint
- Y Puran Kumar shot himself at his Chandigarh residence on Tuesday
- The officer left an eight-page suicide note accusing senior officers of "caste-based discrimination"
A First Information Report or FIR has named Haryana top cop Shatrujeet Singh Kapur, and head of Rohtak police, Narendra Bijarnia, among others for abetment to suicide and under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in connection with the death of IPS officer Y Puran Kumar.
Y Puran Kumar, a 2001-batch officer, died by suicide when he shot himself at his Sector 11 Chandigarh residence on Tuesday. In an eight-page suicide note, he accused senior officers of "mental harassment".
Police said the officer allegedly shot himself with his service revolver, and his body was found by his daughter in the basement.
The police action comes a day after the officer's wife, Amneet P Kumar, an Indian Administrative Service officer, filed a police complaint naming the two officers for subjecting her husband to "caste-based slurs" and sought their immediate arrest.
Earlier today, she also shot off a letter to the Chief Minister seeking justice for her husband.
Amneet, the commissioner and secretary of the Haryana government's Department of Foreign Cooperation, was in Japan as part of a delegation led by Chief Minister Nayab Saini when her husband died by suicide.
"I am not only pleading for my family, but for the value of every honest officer's life and dignity. 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," Amneet said in her police complaint against the officers.
"While official narratives suggest suicide, my soul cries for justice as a wife witnessing years of systematic humiliation, harassment and persecution inflicted upon my husband by senior officials," she said further.
The eight-page suicide note is a "document of broken spirit," the late officer's wife said, adding that the note "lays bare the names of numerous officers whose relentless actions pushed him to the edge."
"Justice should not merely be done, but seen to be done - even for families like ours, shattered by the cruelty of the powerful. My children deserve answers. My husband's decades of public service deserve dignity, not silence," she said.
The officer's suicide note says that the "caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, and targeted mental harassment and atrocities" against him started when he visited a temple in an Ambala police station in 2020.
"The caste-based discrimination, mental harassment, public humiliation and atrocities started by Sh Manoj Yadava, the then DGP Haryana, continues against me till date by other officers of Haryana cadre. Sh Rajeev Arora, IAS (retd) the then ACS Home did not even sanction me earned leave on time due to which I could not even visit my father for the last time before his death, this causes me continued immense pain and mental harassment and is an irreparable loss till date. This was also intimated to all concerned in writing, including to the then Chief Secretary of Haryana, but no action was taken," Kumar said in the note.
The Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, said the 'suicide' of the Haryana IPS officer is a symbol of "deepening social poison".
"The suicide of Haryana IPS officer Y Puran Kumar is a symbol of the deepening social poison that is crushing humanity in the name of caste," Rahul Gandhi posted on X. He claimed the IPS officer had to "endure humiliation and oppression" because of his caste.
"When an IPS officer has to endure humiliation and oppression because of his caste - imagine the circumstances in which an ordinary Dalit citizen must be living," Rahul Gandhi said.
