Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday accused Punjab Deputy Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal of “stooping to the lowest level of politics and trying to flare up communal tension” in the State.
The party’s Punjab convener Gurpreet Singh Ghuggi said that Sukhbir must “own up to putting pressure on police officers” to “falsely implicate” AAP MlA from Delhi Naresh Yadav in the Malerkotla Quran Sharif sacrilege case.
“He (Sukhbir) should resign immediately,” Ghuggi said.
Stating that the key accused in the case Vijay Kumar has confessed that he had named Yadav under pressure from certain officers of Punjab police, the AAP leader said: “Now it is clear that Sukhbir has politicised the police force and is using it to snub his political opponents.”
Ghuggi said that AAP leaders will meet Punjab Governor seeking an independent enquiry to unearth the names of those police officers who had registered the case against Yadav.
“This is not the first time that Sukhbir has misused his power to register false cases. Even at the time of Bargari case, two innocent Sikh youths were arrested on false charges of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib and later, they had to be released as there was no evidence against them,” he said. Yadav, the AAP MlA from Delhi’s Mehrauli, said: “Being a law abiding citizen of this country, I have always cooperated with Punjab police. I am ready to face any enquiry in the future as well.”
He said that the SAD’s “attempt to create tension among communities” will never work as the people of Punjab have now understood the party’s “politics of hatred”. Yadav alleged that because of politicians like Sukhbir, the country was going through a "bad phase".
"Sukhbir sent the police to arrest an elected legislator on the statement of an accused. What action will he now take when the same person has levelled allegations against his own police officersIJ" he asked. AAP leader and Yadav’s lawyer in the case Himmat Singh Shergill said that the court granted bail to the Mehrauli MlA as there was "no evidence" against him.
“Even though he got bail early, who will compensate for those six days he spent in jail and the mental trauma he and his family went through,” he said, adding that it was a “perfect example of miscarriage of justice”.
He accused Punjab police for misbehaving with an elected representative and pressurize for confession.
Yadav was accused of "playing a role in trying to foment communal tension" during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan after miscreants dumped torn pages from the Quran into a drain at Malerkotla.