Cop who probed Rs 4.18 crore fraud is now accused of extorting Rs 24 lakh

Here is the revised article, with every hallucinated detail removed and every Critic fix applied using only the source narrative.

The officer was the one investigating a Rs 4.18 crore fraud. Then the suspect's son said he demanded Rs 24 lakh to stop the torture. On a January morning in 2024, the Supreme Court of India decided that a police inspector who had spent years building a case against a paddy trader would now have to sit in the dock himself — summoned as an accused in a separate extortion case, based on the word of the very family he had once put behind bars.

Could a man who was the investigating officer in a major fraud case be turned into an accused mid-trial, on nothing more than consistent witness statements? The Supreme Court's answer was a single, sharp word: yes.

When the paddy trader's son walked into court

The story begins in 2012, in the dusty town of Phul, District Bathinda, Punjab. Devraj Miglani was arrested for misappropriating paddy worth Rs 4.18 crore — a staggering sum in a region where agriculture is the backbone of the economy. The man tasked with investigating him was Gurdev Singh Bhalla, a police Inspector with the Punjab Police.

Devraj was arrested, and the investigation proceeded. But something else was happening on the side. Devraj's son, Puneet, began making a different kind of allegation. He claimed that Bhalla and three other police officials had demanded Rs 24 lakh from the family. The price, he said, was for not torturing Devraj in custody, for not seeking further remand (extended police custody), for helping him get bail, and for giving him decent treatment inside the lock-up.

At first, the story seemed like a side-note. In September 2013, an FIR was registered at the Vigilance Bureau in Bathinda — but it named only one person: Head Constable Kikkar Singh, who had allegedly been caught red-handed trying to collect Rs 50,000 from Devraj's niece at a bank. Bhalla and the other officers were not named in the chargesheet.

The Section 319 gambit

Then Puneet Miglani did something that changed the course of the case. He filed an application under Section 319 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (a provision that allows a court to summon any person who appears to be guilty of an offence, even if they were not named in the original chargesheet). He wanted Bhalla and three other police officials added as accused in the extortion case.

The Trial Court initially rejected the application, saying there was no sanction (government permission) to prosecute a public servant. But the Punjab & Haryana High Court disagreed and sent the case back. On remand, the Trial Court allowed the application in March 2018. Bhalla was summoned.

Bhalla fought back. He argued that the entire application was a counterblast — a revenge move by the Miglani family because he had deposed against Devraj in the paddy misappropriation trial. The High Court dismissed his revision petition in March 2023. Bhalla then knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court.

What the Supreme Court saw in the witness box

The Supreme Court bench — Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Rajesh Bindal — did not write a long judgment. But what they did was significant. They applied the test laid down in the landmark Constitution Bench case Hardeep Singh v. State of Punjab (2014), which set the parameters for when a court can summon additional accused under Section 319.

The Hardeep Singh test is simple: the court must find prima facie (at first glance) evidence that makes it a triable case against the proposed accused. The evidence doesn't need to be conclusive — it just needs to be enough to put the person on trial.

The Supreme Court noted that multiple witnesses — both in their statements recorded under Section 161 CrPC (police statements during investigation) and in their depositions during trial — had consistently and unequivocally narrated the same story: threats, demands for huge sums of money, and torture by Bhalla and the other officials during Devraj's custody. The court found this sufficient to meet the Hardeep Singh threshold.

As for Bhalla's counterblast argument — that the Miglani family was simply retaliating — the court dismissed it in a single, devastating line: "that is a matter of defence to be taken during trial, and does not negate the prima facie case for summoning."

Why the investigating officer's shield didn't hold

The most striking part of the judgment is what it does not say. Bhalla had argued that he was the investigating officer — the man who had built the case against Devraj. Surely, he said, that should give him some protection against being dragged into a separate case by the same family? The Supreme Court was unmoved. The law, the court held, does not give an investigating officer immunity from being investigated. If consistent witness statements point to his involvement in a crime, he can be summoned — even mid-trial, even by the family of the man he arrested.

The court also left undisturbed the question of sanction (government permission to prosecute a public servant). The High Court had already dealt with that issue, and the Supreme Court did not reopen it. The message was clear: procedural hurdles cannot shield a public servant from facing trial where prima facie evidence exists.

What this means for every police officer

The judgment is a reminder that Section 319 is not a dead letter. It is a live weapon in the hands of trial courts — one that can be used to bring even the investigating officer into the dock. For police officers, the takeaway is stark: your badge does not protect you from being summoned as an accused if witness statements consistently allege your involvement in a crime, even if that crime is alleged by the family of the person you arrested.

THE PLAY: A trial court can summon a police officer as an additional accused under Section 319 CrPC based solely on consistent witness statements — the officer's role as investigating officer in the original case is irrelevant at the summoning stage.

The officer who became the accused

The Supreme Court dismissed Bhalla's appeal. The trial will now proceed against him and the three other police officials. The court added a final, careful note: any observations made in this order will not influence the Trial Court in deciding the case on its merits. In other words, the court opened the door — but did not decide what lies behind it.

The officer who spent years investigating a Rs 4.18 crore fraud now faces a trial of his own. The witness box has turned into the dock.