Our Correspondent
Jaisinghpur, June 20

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has urged the Governor to get the murders of persons belonging to backward classes in Kangra district investigated and lift the veil by thoroughly interrogating the persons accused of the crime.

Releasing copies of the memorandum sent to the Governor, Dr Suraj Bhan, through the SDM, Jaisinghpur, to the local mediapersons, a senior leader and former general secretary of the Himachal Pradesh unit of the BSP, Mr Puran Chand, said the graph of murders of people belonging to Dalit and backward classes had been rising day by day for quite some time.

Citing an example, he said Mr Suresh Kumar, a resident of Ropari village in Jaisinghpur tehsil, had disappeared on January 24 this year from his home under mysterious circumstances. Later, the police recovered his decomposed body on February 28 from Khedilanga. The police had also found a gun at the spot.

According to the postmortem report there were no marks of any injuries on the body. The suspect had said in his statement that Suresh had gone for, hunting to the jungle and taken his (the suspect) gun and four cartridges. But the police found two live cartridges from the pocket of the deceased and another one in the gun while the fourth was missing.

Mr Puran Chand doubted it was a case of suicide.

In another case of a similar nature, Mr Parkash Chand, son of Gareebu Ram, resident of Tang village in Dharamshala tehsil, was murdered but the police treated this as a case of suicide and had not interrogated the suspected persons. The alleged criminals were moving about freely after committing the crime.

The BSP leader demanded that the murders of these youths belonging to Dalit and backward classes should be investigated and the suspected persons be thoroughly interrogated. He said if the mystery surrounding these murders was not solved the BSP would launch a statewide agitation.