Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Tuesday blasted at the Punjab Police IG and SIT member Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh for ‘propagandist, political utterances’ against the senior Badal, while declaring that the Badals father-son duo will cooperate with probe despite “illegal” summons.
The party reacted strongly against the “utterly unprofessional, unwarranted and politically propagandist utterances of Kunwar Vijay Pratap about the appearance of former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal”.
“Parkash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Badal and anyone else, required for the purpose of investigations in the sacrilege cases, will join the investigations when required by the Police or the SIT,” said SAD leaders Balwinder Singh Bhunder and Mahesh Inder Singh Grewal in a joint statement.
They said: “We are committed to fully cooperating with the probe because more than the Government, it is the SAD which wants the truth to come out. We want to lend full assistance to the police in its work. We will give them no excuse to justify their failure in giving a practical shape to their anti-Akali bias.”
SAD leaders said that the SIT member, who is a senior police officer, ‘is publicly acting on a political dictation of his present masters, with the police officer merely speaking the lines given to him by his political bosses”, revealing how biased the officer is against the SAD leaders.
Bhunder and Grewal said that the police officer seems to have forgotten that he is speaking about one the most respected senior statesmen in the country, and one who is over 90 years of age and has been elected Chief Minister no less than five times by the people.
The officer even forgot that Badal and Sukhbir are not the accused before the SIT, but are appearing only as witnesses, they pointed.
“The unprecedented and undignified language of the senior police officer and his personal comments on the political activities, movements and even rallies of an elected leader involves the issue of dignity of elected representatives of the people. This is a grave matter,” they added.
Akali leaders said that the officer’ comments and conduct merely confirms what everybody already knows, that “the SIT is a completely biased political tool of the Congress government headed by Capt Amarinder Singh. Its only job is to give a legal cover to a pre-fabricated political report against the SAD leaders”.