PU Elections: NSUI poster boy for student poll is proclaimed offender

Chandigarh, August 31: The NSUI poster boy for the Panjab University Campus Student Council (PUCSC) elections is a proclaimed offender (PO) in a carjacking case registered in Patiala. Pankaj Jakhar, the NSUI president and a close aide of gangster Sampat Nehra, is campaigning for the party at the university for the past at least one month and the UT and Punjab Police are caught napping.

Pankaj, along with Nehra and others, was booked in a carjacking case registered at the Patiala Urban Estate police station in 2016. He was declared as a PO by the court of Dharminder Paul Singla, Additional Sessions Judge, Patiala, on March 30 this year after he failed to appear before the court.

Surprisingly, Pankaj is actively participating in the PU polls despite police presence on the university campus. His posters dot the campus. On Thursday, Pankaj, a native of Bhiwani in Haryana, was present at the Student Centre, which is buzzing with poll activity.

He has also been taking meetings of party workers and openly roaming around in a white Verna bearing a Haryana number.

When contacted, Pankaj feigned ignorance that he had been declared a PO. “I suffered a leg injury at home on Divali last year. I was hospitalised and treated at the PGI, Rohtak, following which I could not attend the court hearings. Later, I submitted relevant documents in the court to justify my absence and attended the court hearings thereafter,” he added.

However, the last court order dated August 6 in the case mentioned Pankaj as PO. The next date of hearing in the case is scheduled for September 4.

“It is a complete failure of the police intelligence that a PO is roaming free on the PU campus,” said a PU student leader on the condition of anonymity.

Gangster Nehra and Pankaj know each other since their college days. The duo, along with others, has been accused of beating up the driver of a taxi they had hired and driving off the vehicle. The case is still in court.

Nehra was arrested by the Haryana Police at Hyderabad in June this year. He had had more than two dozen criminal cases pending against him in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Chandigarh.

Source Tribune India

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