"Blatant caste based discrimination": Haryana IGP Y Puran Kumar's suicide note

Chandigarh: The "final note" or alleged suicide note left behind by Haryana Police officer Y Puran Kumar, who allegedly shot himself dead at his Chandigarh residence, names "senior officers", details the "mental harassment" and humiliation he faced over the past few years, according to sources. 

Y Puran Kumar (52), a 2001-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, was found dead in his Chandigarh residence on Tuesday. His body, with a gunshot wound, was found in a room in the basement of the Sector 11 house.

Known for his interventions in matters related to the rights of officers, seniority and other issues, Puran Kumar was recently posted as the Inspector General of the Police Training Centre (PTC) in Rohtak's Sunaria.

Physical and electronic evidence, including the weapon Puran Kumar allegedly used to shoot himself, was seized by a team from the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory (CFSL), police said on Tuesday.

They had said a "will" and a "final note" were also found at the scene and seized.

Sources said that Kumar left an eight-page typed and signed 'final note', which he titled "Continued blatant caste based discrimination, targeted mental harassment, public humiliation and atrocities by concerned senior officers of Haryana since August 2020 which is now unbearable".

Naming some officers while detailing their role towards him, the note alleges that caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, targeted mental harassment, and atrocities are being continued on every matter pertaining to him, the sources added. 

In addition, he allegedly mentioned a mala fide generation of mischievous anonymous and pseudo-anonymous complaints against him, floated and processed by some officers for months together to publicly humiliate and embarrass him and thereby damage his reputation, sources said. 

Kumar, who comes from the Scheduled Caste community, mentioned that this is the extent of targeted vindictive and revengeful mental harassment, humiliation and atrocities being committed against officers like him and named a few officers who were blatantly misusing their official positions and authority, thereby compelling him to take this extreme step, according to sources.  

Kumar also mentioned that he gave complaints against the officers, but they were not even enquired into as per the principles of natural justice, sources added. 

Y Puran Kumar’s bureaucrat wife, Amneet P Kumar, who rushed back to Chandigarh from Japan where she was part of a Haryana government delegation, claimed on Wednesday in a police complaint that his death was the result of "systematic persecution" by high-ranking officers.

She allegedly refused to get the postmortem examination of the deceased done till justice was delivered.

Senior officials from Chandigarh police recorded her statement in the case.