A day after the Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing cases of sacrilege and police firing at Kotkapura in 2015, named then Home Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal as one of masterminds of the conspiracy for illegal and excessive use of force on protesters, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday said the chargesheet is an attempt to divert attention from the failure of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on all fronts.
Addressing a press conference, SAD leaders termed the charge sheet filed against its president Badal as persecution and not prosecution. They also warned Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann not to do politics on this sensitive issue and said the AAP government had filed the blatantly vindictive chargesheet to hide its failures on all fronts.
The SAD said that no case is made out against Sukhbir Singh Badal who was out of the state and can in no manner whatsoever be termed as a mastermind as has been done in the charge sheet. The party also noted that the SIT chief LK Yadav as well as other officers had acted in a partisan manner purely to fulfil the political directive of their masters.
SAD leaders Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra, Maheshinder Singh Grewal and Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said that the government had belied its intentions in advance.
“Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan made a public announcement that the SIT led by LK Yadav would file a challan before 28 February. Cabinet minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal also assured protestors at Behbal Kalan that the name of Sukhbir Singh Badal would be included in the challan filed by SIT,” Prof Chandumajra said.
He said the AAP leaders made these announcements despite the fact that the Punjab and Haryana High Court had directed the SIT to present its challan to the court in a sealed envelope.
“The AAP government is duty bound to disclose how a sealed report was made available to the AAP leadership and was also leaked to the media,” Prof Chandumajra added.
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The SAD leaders said the Chief Minister also posted the contents of the report on social media. Terming these developments as a deliberate attempt to mislead Punjabis and a diversionary tactic, the SAD leaders said the CM would have to answer for this abuse of power.
The SAD also noted that the government was also trying to divert attention from the constitutional crisis which had been created in the state due to the clash with the Governor.
The SIT on Friday named former Punjab CM,
Parkash Singh Badal, the then home minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini as accused in the challan presented in a Faridkot court.
The 7,000-page challan named senior Badal as an accused for facilitating execution of the conspiracy, while Sukhbir and Saini have been named as masterminds of the conspiracy for illegal and excessive use of force on protesters at Kotkapura to conceal inaction of the state when the protesters assembled to raise their voice against three sacrilege incidents.
