Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa on Sunday challenged Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his Deputy son Sukhbir Badal to have guts to own moral responsibility for the police failure to control turmoil in the state as conceded by the appointment of Suresh Arora as the state police chief replacing Sumedh Singh Saini.
“Sukhbir Badal is also the home minister and Saini is his personal choice. He demanded that Sukhbir Badal must also resign as the president of the Shiromani Akali Dal as the issues involved are multi-layered,” he said.
Bajwa said that at the first stage, it was intelligence failure coupled with that of the investigating agencies after the bir of Guru Granth Sahib was reported missing on June 1 from Burj Jawaharsinghwala village till its torn angs (parts) were found scattered in nearby Bargari village a few days back.
He underscored that the stand of the Congress had now been abundantly vindicated that the entire sordid operation was engineered by the state agencies.
Describing the killing of two persons killed in unprovoked police firing during dharna by Sikh protesters at Behbal Kalan against sacrilege of Granth Sahib as “cold blooded murder”, Bajwa said that the police framed two amritdhari brothers from Panjgrain Kalan village “as a cover up”, while at the same time, trying to establish their foreign links.
The frame up turned ridiculous as the ‘foreign hands’ themselves came forward to claim that they had sent the money for a different purpose and that too through legal transaction, he pointed. Bajwa trashed the Chief Minister for overall mess that involved unprecedented denigration of highest Sikh institutions also. “Here is the extreme example as to how he has tried to misuse these institutions for his vested political interests that has led to the state-wide outrage among the Sikhs,” he said. He also blamed Badal for vitiating the atmosphere in the state and said that he had no right to continue in power and should resign before further damage was done to this sensitive state.