Chandigarh, July 4 (IANS) The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab has been playing politics on the sacrilege issue by instituting a fresh Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the 2015 Behbal Kalan firing case even though four chargesheets had already been submitted in the case.
It asked the government why it was not proceeding against jailed Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh despite having been indicted by an SIT in the interlinked Burj Jawahar Singh and Bargari sacrilege cases.
Akali Dal leader Parambans Singh Romana said the government had launched an orchestrated campaign by procuring large-scale media coverage of the visit of a new SIT, headed by Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Harjit Singh, to Burj Jwahar Singh and Bargari.
“This is being done despite the fact that this SIT is probing the Behbal Kalan case, which has nothing to do with sacrilege committed in Burj Jwahar Singh and Bargari,” Romana told the media here.
He said the drama was being done to divert attention from the failures of the AAP government, as no investigation remained to be done after the submission of four chargesheets in the case.
He said that instead of doing such cheap stunts, the government should tell what it had done to solve the 597 cases of sacrilege that occurred in Punjab over the last nine years.
“As many as 247 persons who were nominated in the cases were not arrested. Also, 102 cases remained untraced while 82 cases were cancelled. The government should also tell what action it had taken in the sacrilege committed by its police force in Sultanpur Lodhi,” he added.
Asserting that both the Congress and AAP had consistently played politics on sacrilege, the Akali Dal leader said that the sacrilege issue is brought to the front on the eve of every election.
He said the government was again politicising this issue, even though Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had released a 467-page report on sacrilege cases three and a half years ago.
“Even though Gurmeet Ram Rahim was the prime accused, the AAP government did not give sanction to initiate a case against him.”
He said the government had soft-pedalled taking action against another sacrilege accused, Pradeep Kler, and had not questioned another accused, Honeypreet, till now.
“All this proves that the AAP government has done some deal with the Sirsa Dera head,” he said.
Romana said the government was also trying to divert the attention of the people after a video in which the Chief Minister was seen committing a sacrilege against the Guru Sahiban.
“It has become even more desperate after the video was revealed to be real and a subsequent government cover-up exercise was exposed,” the Akali leader added.
–IANS
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