A day after the Punjab Government’s constituted Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing the Kotkapura police firing incident, questioned the former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, it summoned his son and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal for questioning on June 26 (Saturday).
The SIT has summoned Sukhbir Badal as he was the Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister when the Kotkapura police firing took place on October 14, 2015.
Besides the senior Badal, the probe panel has already questioned the then Director General of Police (DGP) Sumedh Singh Saini.
The SIT is probing that who gave the clearance to the district police for opening firing at the mob protesting sacrilege incidents and if the police action was justified.
The Punjab Police SIT, led by ADGP LK Yadav, questioned SAD patriarch Badal at his official residence for nearly two and half hours.
High drama was witnessed when the former Chief Minister questioned the presence of non-SIT member — a retired Director Prosecution Vijay Singla during questioning. Sources said that Badal objected to Singla questioning him since he was not a SIT member while Akali leaders said that the DIG cannot be replaced for questioning by the retired director of the prosecution department and that it was an illegal act.
Badal’s political adviser Harcharan Singh Bains said that the former Chief Minister also questioned the SIT on why it could not widen the probe to investigate the Congress and the AAP hand in sacrilege conspiracy to defame and destabilize the then Akali government. Badal was Chief Minister of Punjab when the incident of police firing at Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan had taken place in October 2015 following protests over the sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib.
Bains said the Punjab and Haryana high court had stated that former IG Kunwar Vijay Partap, who was a member of the earlier SIT, politicized the probe. Therefore, Badal told the SIT that after the High Court remarks, it needed to be probed at whose behest had Kunwar tried to vilify the Akalis and Sikhs against them, he said.
The earlier SIT, headed by then ADGP Prabodh Kumar, including then IG Kunwar as its member, had questioned Badal on November 16, 2018, in the same case.