Chandigarh, Dec. 24 -- The Punjab and Haryana court on Tuesday suspended the life sentence of former Himachal Pradesh Inspector General of Police (IGP) Zahur Haider Zaidi in a custodial death case till the pendency of his appeal. In January this year, the CBI court of then special judge Alka Malik had sentenced Zaidi along with seven other police officers to life imprisonment for the custodial death of an accused in the Gudiya gang rape and murder case of 2017. The case was transferred to Chandigarh on Supreme Court's orders. While pronouncing its verdict on the case, the HC bench of Justice Anoop Chitkara and Justice Sukhvinder Kaur noted a lack of motive and the accused officer not being present in police station at the time of the custodial death of Suraj Singh, as pointed out by the IGP in his appeal. Zaidi had informed the court that prior to the incident, he was already on a pre-sanctioned leave to perform the rituals of his deceased father. "Thus, in the entirety of these prima facie analyses coupled with the period of custody already undergone, which is more than five years, the applicant is entitled to suspension of sentence. It is clarified that the observations made are only for the purpose of deciding the present suspension application, and it shall not be construed as an expression of opinion at the time of deciding the final appeal," noted the bench. While suspending the sentence, the HC expressed its doubt on the CBI's theory and said, "The CBI's case is that although in the press conference held on July 13, 2017 by Zaidi, he had claimed that there was a lot of scientific evidence available against arrested persons." "However, in fact no such evidence was available, and the focus of the officers of the SIT was diverted on extraction of confession from the arrested persons at any cost. Because of this statement made in the press conference by Zaidi, some of the members of the SIT brutally tortured the accused, and all this was done to support the claims made by Zaidi in the press conference about the availability of scientific evidence," it noted. "This story itself raises a doubt. Even if investigators were able to extract confessions as desired, such confessions could not have been construed as scientific evidence. The case set up by the CBI for criminal conspiracy is based on claims of scientific evidence collected during investigation. To validate such claims, only scientific evidence would have been required, not confessions, which are not scientific evidence. On this ground alone, Zaidi is entitled to suspension of sentence," the court said....