Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday assailed the ShiromaniAkali Dal (SAD) for resorting to desperate measures to malign former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s image through false propaganda and wrongly implicating the ex-PM Prime Minister in riots that took place more than three decades ago.

Lashing out at SAD president Sukhbir Badal for questioning Rajiv Gandhi’s role in the riots, the Chief Minister ridiculed the persistent efforts of the Akali leaders saying that the former PM who was not even present in Delhi when the violence broke out.

In a press statement issued here, Captain claimed that Rajiv Gandhi was in Contai, some 150 kms from Kolkata (then Calcutta), on an election tour of West Bengal.

Accusing SukhbirBadal of blatantly and deliberately misinterpreting JagdishTytler’s statements in a TV interview, Captain Amarinder also flayed SukhbirBadal for trying to link Rajiv Gandhi with a sting operation which Tytler had already dismissed as being a doctored video.

It was a matter of record that by the time Rajiv returned to Delhi, after being informed of his mother’s assassination, rioting had already erupted, said the Chief Minister, pointing out that nowhere, and at no point in time, had Tytler ever implicated Rajiv in the riots, as was being alleged by SukhbirBadal.

In his interview Tytler had, in fact, categorically stated that Rajiv went around with him to try and control the situation, which had seriously escalated by the time he was sworn in as prime minister. Rajiv had issued clear instructions to all party MLAs to go back to their constituencies and defuse the situation at any cost, said Captain Amarinder.

Further, media reports in the wake of the riots had shown that Rajiv had unequivocally condemned the violence and warned of stringent action against anyone found to be indulging in communal violence, he added.

After their botched attempts to spread false propaganda by misconstruing Tytler’s TV interview, the Akalis were now taking refuge in a video, which the Congress leader had categorically rejected as metamorphosed, in a desperate bid to give credence to their fabrication, said the Chief Minister.

He further stated that the fact was that the Akalis had not even an iota of evidence to back their reprehensible charges against Rajiv Gandhi.

Have not the people of Punjab already suffered enough due to the terrorism that swept the state in the wake of the 1984 riots, the Chief Minister asked SukhbirBadal, questioning the Akali leader’s motive behind spreading falsehoods that could trigger fresh tensions.