Chandigarh, Aug 30 (IANS) Coming down heavily on the shoddy investigation by Haryana Police, the Punjab and Haryana High Court Thursday handed over to the CBI the probe in a former village headman's murder, in which two sitting legislators are named.

A bench, headed by Justice Mahesh Grover, said that the special investigation team of the state police's Crime Branch, which had probed earlier, was trying to pass off a death as a suicide.

Rajender, the son of the murdered former village head Karam Singh, had sought a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBBI) probe into the death.

The names of the two legislators, O.P. Jain and Zile Ram Sharma, had figured in the controversy after Karam Singh's stabbed body was found near the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) in Karnal, 120 km from here, June last year.

While Jain was then Haryana tourism and transport minister, Zile Ram Sharma was a chief parliamentary secretary (CPS) in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government.

Just a day before his murder, Karam Singh, who was in his late 50s, had submitted a written complaint to Chief Minister Hooda and police against Jain and Sharma about a fraud committed on him.

He had accused the two of duping him of nearly Rs.13 lakh on the pretext of providing government jobs to his son and two nephews. But they neither provided the jobs nor returned the money, his complaint said.

Both Jain and Sharma were forced to resign June last year.

Incidentally, a witness to the death of Karam Singh, Chamail Singh, too was found dead under mysterious circumstances just a week later.