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Rape, murder, burglary - he's seen it all

Be it a murder, a rape, a burglary or even a case of sodomy, one resident of Amritsar in Punjab has seen it all -- or so the police claim.

Jaswant Singh Mauji, according to The Indian Express newspaper, has been, over the years, named as a key witness in several criminal cases, including six murders, a rape and four thefts.

This "witness", around whose alleged testimony several cases revolve, now finds himself in the dock.

Two criminals convicted on the basis of Mauji's testimonies have now petitioned the Punjab and Haryana high court. While one says Mauji is mentioned as a witness in 40 cases, the other says he is a witness in about 100 cases.

Mauji reportedly admitted to The Indian Express that he never really witnessed any of the crimes the police claim he had. And there are few takers of the police claim of Mauji's omnipresence as far as crime is concerned, with a judge trying a rape case in 1996 calling him a "stooge witness."

"I have given affidavits in several cases where I don't even know who the accused are," Mauji was quoted as saying.

"Though I no longer go to court to depose in cases, the police keep putting down my name (as a witness). They (the police) have 20 or 30 people like me on their rolls," Mauji charged.

Mauji opened his inning as a "witness" in 1991.

"After I was attacked by terrorists, I moved to Amritsar in 1989. Here I met Sadar police station SHO (station house officer) S S Bedi, who first started using me as a witness," he told the paper.

"I realised I would be making a lot of enemies for no reason. But by then other SHOs had found out and had started using me as a witness."

But Bedi denied using Mauji as a fake witness. "I was SHO at Sadar only for a short time," he said. "I don't remember any such thing. If you talk about a specific case, I may have met him, otherwise I cannot recall any such thing."

Indo-Asian News Service

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