Chandigarh: Disturbing details have surfaced surrounding the death of senior Indian Police Service officer, Y. Puran Kumar, the additional director general of police in Haryana, leading to more questions among the state’s police and administrative circles.Kumar’s eight-page typed and signed suicide note – that was recovered following his death, allegedly by suicide, on October 7 at his residence in Chandigarh – had repeated references to ‘caste discrimination’, ‘mental harassment’, ‘public humiliation’ and ‘atrocities’.The 2001-batch officer, who hailed from Andhra Pradesh, served in several key posts during his long police service in the state. He had headed the Ambala and Rohtak police ranges, along with heading Home Guards, Telecommunications, and several other key departments.His suicide note reflected how sustained humiliation and bias within the system had allegedly pushed him to take his own life.52-year-old senior Haryana police officer from 2001 batch Y Puran Kumar. Photo: Haryana Police/PTI.The late officer’s wife, Amneet P. Kumar, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, had moved an official complaint before Chandigarh police on October 8, seeking a first information report against current Haryana director general of police Shatrujeet Singh Kapur and Rohtak superintendent of police Narendra Bijarniya for abetment to suicide.She also sought action against these senior officers under relevant sections of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act for alleged caste discrimination against her husband, to the extent that he was driven to suicide.“This is not a case of ordinary suicide but a direct result of systematic persecution of my husband – an officer from SC community – by powerful and high-ranking officers who have used their positions to mentally torture him, ultimately driving him to such an extent that he was left with no other option but to take his life,” she wrote in her complaint.While Chandigarh police are currently investigating the case, neither Shatrujeet Singh Kapur nor Narendra Bijarnia have issued a public statement on the specific allegations that Amneet Kumar has raised.Amneet Kumar – currently serving as commissioner and secretary of the Haryana government’s Department of Foreign Cooperation – was in Japan along with an official delegation led by Haryana chief minister Nayab Saini when her husband allegedly shot himself at their residence in Chandigarh on October 7. Saini visited the IPS officer’s official residence in Sector 24 of Chandigarh this afternoon (October 9) to offer his condolences to the bereaved family. Other senior functionaries of the government too paid their respects.The noteKumar said in his noted that the discrimination against him began when he visited a temple in a police station in Ambala in 2020. Since then, he said that faced systematic and continuous targeting. He added that he was also denied leave to see his dying father, causing him immense and lasting emotional pain. He wrote that despite multiple representations, his pleas for equitable treatment –including fair application of service and leave rules, accommodation and promotion policies – were ignored or used vindictively against him.He also added that even after escalating the matter to senior authorities, no action was taken. Kumar said that his grievances, which he had supported with written evidence and meeting records, were persistently neglected.The officer alleged ‘continued discrimination’ by way of delay in finalising the Performance Appraisal Report, initiating false, vexatious, and malicious proceedings based on anonymous and pseudonymous complaints against him. He said that he was humiliated, harassed, and insulted publicly.He said that he could not bear this “continued and concerted conspiracy of concerned officers to continue with caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, targeted mental harassment, and atrocities any longer.”‘Conspiracy’In her complaint to the Chandigarh police, the late officer’s wife Amneet Kumar said that she had witnessed the years of humiliation, harassment and persecution inflicted upon her husband. She also stated her husband’s pain was not hidden and was explanatory from the numerous complaints filed by him (something he also referred to in his suicide note) as he endured caste-based discrimination.“My husband had reasonably learnt and intimated to me that a conspiracy is being hatched on the directions of DGP Haryana Shatrujeet Singh Kapur and he would be falsely implicated in a frivolous and mischievous complaint by fabricating false evidence,” she alleged in the complaint.She also claimed that most cruelly, just before his death, a false FIR had been registered at the Urban Estate Rohtak police station dated October 6, against a staff member of her husband, Sushil.Amneet Kumar wrote in her complaint that her husband was being implicated in the case by fabricating evidence against him.She also wrote that her husband had contacted the DGP on this case and had a conversation with him, but at that time the DGP had “hushed up the conversation.”“Further my husband had also called Narendra Bijarniya SP Rohtak, but he intentionally did not answer his call. From the circumstances, it can well be seen that Narendra Bijarniya, SP Rohtak was conspiring with the DGP Haryana,” she added.She said that the eight-page note is a document of a broken spirit, and lays bare these truths and names of numerous officers whose “relentless actions pushed him to the edge.”“For the harassment meted out to my husband, he used to inform me about the same. It is impossible for me to find the words for what my children and I have lost – a husband, a father, a man whose only crime was honesty in service,” she wrote.She further wrote that it is settled law that continuous acts of harassment, humiliation and defamation can constitute abetment. The totality of circumstances must be examined, not just proximate incidents. Administrative persecution can drive a person to suicide.“Further, the harassment of my husband on the basis of his Scheduled Caste identity constitutes a separate and aggravating offence under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989,” she wrote.“I am not only pleading for my family, but for the value of every honest officer’s life and dignity,” she said.