By IANS
Chandigarh : Haryana's top police official will form a special committee to look into what the family of a missing Christian priest suspects to be a case of "custodial death".
Priest Jung Bahadur Singh from the Gohana area of Sonepat district went missing after a team of Haryana police took him to Mumbai in August 2005 to investigate a case in which he was the accused.
Jung Bahadur Singh, who hails from Dalit hamlet Nai Basti on Thanpur Road in Gohana, was accused of kidnapping his own younger brother Manish Kumar and his uncle's daughter Manisha Ridlal in March 2004.
However, the priest's family maintains that the underage boy and girl eloped, and that he was falsely accused by his aunt Anita Ridlal and other villagers who disliked him due to his conversion to Christianity.
The family also suspects that the police might have killed Jung Bahadur Singh in Mumbai when he was in their "unofficial custody".
"A team of Haryana police took Singh to Mumbai to locate the missing boy and girl two years ago. When they could not find the pair, they returned but without Singh, who has been missing since then," the vice president of the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission, Abraham Mathai, told IANS.
Mathai added that the onus of bringing back the priest was on the police.
Mathai and the priest's family met Haryana Director General of Police (DGP) R.S. Dalal here Friday to request an inquiry into the case.
Dalal told IANS that a special committee, headed by Additional General Director of Police John V. George, would be formed to locate the missing priest as well as the boy and the girl.
"My husband has been facing opposition from his own family members and other villagers after he converted to Christianity from a Dalit family a few years ago. They spread rumours that he was hypnotizing people and kidnapping girls to make them Christians. This led to the false accusation against him after his brother eloped with the girl," alleged the priest's wife Mona Singh.
The priest's wife also filed a petition against the police in the Chandigarh High Court in November 2005 but the police refused to admit to the court that their team had gone to Mumbai with Jung Bahadur Singh. The case remains pending.
"I can name and identify the policemen who came to our house and took my husband Aug 16, 2005. Besides, he called me from Mumbai and told me that he was staying in a hotel with the police and that was the last time I spoke to him," she said.
Mathai said that according to the records of Hotel Yatri in Santa Cruz, Mumbai, the Haryana policemen checked in with Jung Bahadur Singh and spent a few days there.
However, Superintendent of Police Navdeep Singh indicated that Jung Bahadur Singh was not missing but absconding.
"Singh disappeared a few days before his bail was to be cancelled," Navdeep Singh told IANS.