CHANDIGARH: The owner of a printing press was booked and an official of the Hoshiarpur District Election Office (DEO) suspended on Thursday for putting the picture of a 2012 Delhi gang-rape convict on a hoarding which encouraged people to vote, officials said.
Departmental action was initiated against Rajan Monga, incharge of the Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP), an official spokesman said.
Karnail Singh, an election tehsildar, was suspended and Tajinder Singh of Anand Signways Printing Press booked for putting the picture on the hoarding, an official spokesman said.
Deputy Commissioner-cum-District Election Officer Isha Kalia on Wednesday said that she had handed over the investigation to Additional Deputy Commissioner Harpreet Singh Sudan after the matter was brought to her notice.
The Punjab State Election Commission also had recommended police action against the printing press owner after the picture of Mukesh Singh featured on the flex hoarding.
The printing press and the officers concerned of the Election Department did not check whose photo was printed on it, officials said.
On Monday, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) had issued a notice to the Election Commission over the hoarding.
The EC had then sought a report from the chief electoral officer of Punjab.
On December 16, 2012, six men assaulted and raped a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in Delhi and a fortnight later, she did in a Singapore hospital.
The victim's mother had apprised DCW chief Swati Maliwal of the matter, saying a picture was being circulated on social media wherein Mukhesh Singh's photograph was displayed on official hoardings in Punjab.
Terming it the attack "most brutal, barbaric and diabolical", the Supreme Court in 2017, upheld the death sentence for four men convicted of the savage rape and murder of the young woman who came to be known by an outraged nation as "Nirbhaya", the fearless.
One of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail here, while a minor, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board.
He was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.