leader of Opposition in Punjab Vidhan Sabha Sukhpal Singh Khaira is in dock after Fazilka local court summoned the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MlA in connection with a drug case.
Both the ruling Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has attacked Khaira while demanding his resignation from the coveted post.
Refusing to step down on “politically motivated charges”, Khaira at the same time maintained that he would only quit if Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and SAD president Sukhbir Badal would also resign “as they too have been accused on links with criminals”.
Bholath MlA also declared that he would challenge “erroneous” summoning in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Khaira’s name had come up in a heroin smuggling case after the arrest of some drugs smugglers by police in Fazilka in 2015. Admitting an application under Section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) providing for adding additional accused, the Court of Additional District and Sessions Judge in Fazilka had ordered issuance of summons to Khaira in the case.
Slamming the Congress Government for unleashing political vendetta against him, Khaira said that his summoning by the Fazilka court was “wrongful and erroneous” and “done at the behest of Capt Amarinder Singh through his politically motivated prosecution machinery”.
“These maliciously false allegations of the Amarinder government are yet another attempt to intimidate me and gag my voice against corruption and other misdeeds. The conspiracy to nail me in an utterly false drugs case amounted to shooting the messenger and silencing the voice of whistle-blowers,” Khaira said.
“It is sad to note that while Amarinder Singh is blatantly shielding the actual drug kingpin Bikram Majithia despite sensational evidence against him, I am being framed falsely to settle scores,” he said, wondering how the additional public prosecutor of Fazilka could move a vague application seeking his summoning, when he was neither named in the FIR nor in the charge-sheet nor in any statement of independent witnesses.
Khaira said when the drug scandal broke out in March 2015, then Parkash Singh Badal Government had set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by the then IG Bathinda Zone, DIG Ferozpur Range and SSP Fazilka as its members.
“The SIT went deeply into the case but could not find anything incriminating against me because of which my name never figured in FIR, charge-sheet and the trial. It is also astonishing how a Court could summon him when the trial in the said drug case has concluded,” he argued.
He said it was surprising that he was being summoned on the basis of call records which have been wrongly presented by the Additional public prosecutor to the Fazilka court accusing him calling the accused in the drugs case 78 times.
“If merely making telephone calls to an accused was an offence, then why is Majithia being spared when drug lords like Jagdish Bhola, Bittu Aulakh, Jagjit Chahal etc have named him in the charge-sheet prepared by the Enforcement DirectorateIJ Has the Punjab prosecution moved any application under 319 to summon Bikram Majithia in various drug cases pending trial in different courts,” said Khaira.
At the same time, Khaira reminded both the traditional parties that their leaders Capt Amarinder, Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Badal never resigned their positions of power despite being summoned and chargesheeted in massive corruption cases.
Khaira also reminded the Badals that when father-son duo took oath as Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister in 2007, they were not only summoned by the Court but were also chargesheeted in Prevention of Corruption Act and Disproportionate Assets case.
Similarly, even now Sukhbir Badal is facing trial in an attempt to murder case when he beat a photographer of Kotkapura in a court of law. Khaira dared the junior Badal that before seeking his resignation will he quit his position as SAD president.
“Similarly, Capt Amarinder has also been summoned and is facing trial in two major corruption cases of ludhiana City Centre and Amritsar Improvement Trust scandals...Will the Congress leaders advising me ask Capt Amarinder Singh to resign as Chief MinisterIJ” he asked.
Khaira stated that in case both Captain Amarinder Singh and Sukhbir Singh Badal offer to resign their positions to uphold ethics and morality in politics, he will follow suit in five minutes and resign from the position of loP.
“But if both tainted leaders of Congress and SAD refuse to resign, I advise their cronies not to speak about ethics and morality in politics,” concluded Khaira.