Chandigarh, November 16: There was high drama at the residence of former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal here as the SIT arrived to question him as part of the probe in a 2015 sacrilege issue.
The SIT head, ADGP Prabodh Kumar, was absent, while IG Kunwar Vijay Pratap arrived for questioning.
Badal had expressed his reservation over being questioned by the said IG, accusing him of being in control of his political masters.
Seeing the ADGP absent, Badal spoke to him over phone. The questioning relates to an attempt to murder case, regarding the Kotkapura firing incident of October 2015.
Badal asked Prabodh Kumar to come for questioning himself, he being the SIT chairman.
Prabodh Kumar is learnt to have told Badal that he would arrive in 10 minutes. Later, Prabodh Kumar arrived there.
Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia said that of the five-member SIT, only one member arrived, which showed that the issue was being politicised by Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa.
‘Politically motivated’
Badal accused Chief Minister Amarinder Singh of using SIT to target him.
“Amarinder Singh has sent the SIT to me. …This SIT is politically motivated. Never in the history of independent India has a democratically elected chief minister been called for questioning for attempted murder: neither Indira Gandhi for operation blue star nor the current chief minister for the Amritsar rail accident,” he told the press later.
“I’m not scared of jail. SAD is a peace-loving party. Congress is playing dirty politics, and it could lead Punjab back to its dark history. In his last term, Capt Amarinder had sent me, my son and wife to jail.”
He said he’d answered investigators’ questions over allegations of police firing at Kotkapura.
“They want to turn us from witness to accused. It’s all politically motivated,” he said, adding that Gandhis and the Congress “always targeted” him and the Akali Dal.
