Days after being named in a charge sheet in the 2015 Kotkapura police firing case, SAD patriarch Parkash Singh Badal on Monday said the AAP government’s move to implicate him in a ”false” case was ”extremely immoral and dangerous to democracy”.
A Special Investigations Team of Punjab Police probing into the 2015 Kotkapura police firing case filed a charge sheet in a Faridkot court last month, naming the-then chief minister Badal, his deputy Sukhbir Singh Badal, the-then Director-General of Police Sumedh Singh Saini and others.
Though a court last week allowed his anticipatory bail plea, it dismissed the petition of his son and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal.
In an open letter addressed to the people of Punjab, nonagenarian Badal said the previous Congress government played politics for five years over ”some unfortunate incidents” during the Akali regime and claimed that the AAP dispensation was doing the same.
In the letter written in Punjabi, Badal said ”some unfortunate incidents” took place during his tenure as chief minister, in an apparent reference to the 2015 sacrilege cases.
It was a deep conspiracy to disrupt Punjab’s peace and communal harmony, he said.
During this episode, two law-and-order related incidents occurred that were extremely unfortunate, the five-time chief minister said in an apparent reference to the police firings at Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura in Faridkot in 2015.
Badal said he himself was in favor of a fair investigation in these incidents and added that exemplary punishment should be meted out to those involved.
He also expressed sadness that since the departure of his government, the Congress regime for the first five years and the AAP dispensation after that continuously played politics on these issues.
The move by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s government to implicate him in a ”false” case was ”extremely immoral, extremely dangerous to democracy and a conspiracy to tarnish the constitutional office of the chief minister”, Badal said.
This is the height of vendetta politics, he alleged.
The former chief minister said he witnessed a lot of ups and downs in his 70 years of public service and claimed to have fought ”brutal government repression”, spending a major part of his life in jails for the rightful demands of ’Panth’ and Punjabis.
Having fought against the ”oppression” of governments all his life, Badal said he would continue to fight even now, at the age of 95.
Such pressures can never bend him, Badal said while reposing his trust in the judiciary.
Badal also alleged that this case was a ”big conspiracy to weaken” the Shiromani Akali Dal.
The incidents related to the theft of a ’bir’ copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, handwritten sacrilegious posters and pages of the holy book being torn at Bargari in Faridkot in 2015.
These cases had triggered protests during which two people were killed at Behbal Kalan and a few injured at Kotkapura in police firing.
Read all the Latest India News here
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI)
