An advocate-cum-politician HS Phoolka on Friday lashed out at the Punjab Government, especially the Advocate-General office, for not presenting its case before the Punjab and Haryana High Court which had stayed the proceedings on Justice Ranjit Singh (retd) Commission report into sacrilege cases against three former cops a day before.
Phoolka said that the absence of Punjab Advocate-General Atul Nanda or his legal team during Thursday’s hearing exposed the real intentions of the Capt Amarinder Singh government.
Aam Aadmi Party MLA minced no words to allege that everything the Congress Government is doing, right from Ministers’ statements, to constituting the special investigation team (SIT), is “sham”, and being done in collusion with those indicted by the Commission.
“It is not incompetence. There is either collusion between the government and those indicted by the Commission or it was all a sham, right from speeches of ministers in the Vidhan Sabha to the formation of SIT, which will have to probe the incidents of sacrilege at Bargari and police firing at Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan in 2015 from the beginning,” he said.
He maintained that the latest development has vindicated his stand that the Congress just wanted to take the political mileage out of the “emotive issue”, but no action on the report.
Notably, Phoolka, who had given 15-day ultimatum to Punjab Government for acting against those indicted by the Commission, including the former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the then DGP Sumedh Singh Saini on September 1, had postponed his decision to resign from the State Assembly till the next date of hearing on September 20.
Questioning government’s intentions, and coming down heavily on the state law officers’ team, Phoolka pointed that everyone knew through the media reports on what grounds the three police officers had challenged the report.
“All the state law officers had to do was to show that the Commission had served notices to the accused as per the Commission of Inquiry Act, which it could easily do,” he said.