Condemning Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MlA HS Phoolka’s threat to quit as an MlA as ‘an attempt to obstruct the course of justice’, Punjab’s five senior Cabinet Ministers on Sunday said that such acts do not behove a senior leader in a democratic polity like ours.
“The government is committed to book and punish those indicted by Justice Ranjit Singh Commission through expeditious and thorough investigation, in accordance with the due process of law,” said the Minister, in a joint statement.
Demands for arrest or threats to resign from the Assembly even before the investigation is commenced by the SIT was tantamount to offering the accused ready legal defence of bias and prejudice, said the Ministers while urging all political parties to cooperate to allow the SIT to work freely and fairly, without any pressure.
They said that the State Government, led by Capt Amarinder Singh, was committed to fulfilling its election promise to delivering justice to the innocent victims of the indiscriminate police firing, maintaining that the guilty would be booked, irrespective of their political affiliation or position.
Notably, Phoolka, a day before, had set 15-day deadline for the five Congress ministers, who sought action against former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini to be tried for police Kotkapura firing during the debate in the Punjab assembly, to either get the Government to name Badal and Saini in the FIR or resign. He even challenged the government that in case it failed to do so, he would “quit as Dakha MlA”.
The five ministers — Navjot Singh Sidhu, Manpreet Badal, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa and Charanjit Singh Channi — maintained that Phoolka’s ultimatum to book certain individuals in 15 days was “a violation of the basic tenets of equity and justice”.
As a senior lawyer himself, Phoolka would be well-versed with the needs of equity and justice, said the Ministers, urging the AAP MlA not to play politics on such a sensitive religious matter.
“Even the Supreme Court would ordinarily be loath to interfere in a criminal investigation, except in the case of malafides being involved, since the investigation of an offence is the domain of the police or the investigation agency, which is expected to act impartially,” the Ministers pointed out.
They pointed that the unanimous resolution of Punjab Vidhan Sabha for setting up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the desecration and firing incidents was a sacrosanct directive, which the government was fully committed to implementing.
SIT was in the process of being constituted and would investigate the entire matter in strict accordance with law, said the Ministers, adding that carrying out the probe in a free and fair manner, without interference, required that it be allowed to function without pressure.
“Phoolka should remember that the SIT has been set up to probe the truth behind the desecration of our holy text. “Respect to the holy Guru Granth Sahib or any other holy text such as the Bible, the Geeta or the Quran, itself demands that such a probe be carried out freely and transparently, without any interference, for which the government is also in process of amending the law,” said the Ministers, in their joint statement.