Haryana IPS Officer Y Puran Kumar's Suicide: Allegations of Caste-Based Harassment Against Top Officials

Director General of Police (DGP) Shatrujeet Singh Kapur (File Photo)

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 stated that the officer allegedly used his service revolver to take his life, and his daughter discovered his body in the basement.

The police action follows 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 demanded their immediate arrest.

Earlier today, she also addressed a letter to the Chief Minister seeking justice for her husband.

Amneet, who serves as 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's suicide occurred.

"I am pleading not only for my family, but for the value of every honest officer's life and dignity. This is not a simple suicide case but a direct consequence of systematic persecution of my husband - an officer from SC community by powerful and high-ranking officers who used their positions to mentally torture him, ultimately driving him to such desperation that he felt taking his life was his only option," Amneet stated in her police complaint.

"While official reports indicate suicide, as a wife who witnessed years of systematic humiliation, harassment and persecution inflicted upon my husband by senior officials, I am devastated and seeking justice," she further expressed.

The eight-page suicide note represents a "document of broken spirit," according to the late officer's wife, who added that the note "clearly names numerous officers whose relentless actions pushed him to the edge."

"Justice should be not only done but visibly done - even for families like ours, devastated by the cruelty of the powerful. My children deserve answers. My husband's decades of public service deserve dignity, not silence," she emphasized.

The officer's suicide note reveals that the "caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, and targeted mental harassment and atrocities" against him began when he visited a temple in an Ambala police station in 2020.

"The caste-based discrimination, mental harassment, public humiliation and atrocities initiated by Sh Manoj Yadava, the then DGP Haryana, continues against me to this day by other Haryana cadre officers. Sh Rajeev Arora, IAS (retd) the then ACS Home failed to sanction my earned leave on time, preventing me from seeing my father before his death, causing me continued immense pain and mental harassment and an irreparable loss. This was communicated to all concerned in writing, including to the then Chief Secretary of Haryana, but no action was taken," Kumar stated in his note.

The Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, commented that the 'suicide' of the Haryana IPS officer symbolizes "deepening social poison".

"The suicide of Haryana IPS officer Y Puran Kumar represents a symbol of the deepening social poison that is crushing humanity in the name of caste," Rahul Gandhi shared on X. He asserted that the IPS officer had to "endure humiliation and oppression" because of his caste.

"When an IPS officer must endure humiliation and oppression due to his caste - imagine the circumstances in which an ordinary Dalit citizen must be living," Rahul Gandhi remarked.