Ludhiana December 25: Youth Akali Dal leaders Gurdeep Singh Gosha and Meetpal Dugri today blackened the statue of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at Salem Tabri. The duo shot the video of their act and spread it on social media. They sprayed black colour on the face of the statue and red on the hands.
Senior Congress leaders including local MP Ravneet Singh Bittu and district Congress committee chief Gurpreet Singh Gogi, and several party workers reached the spot.
A Congress leader, Gursimran Singh Mand, took off his turban and cleaned the statue. Mand is a former vice-chairman of PPCC’s local bodies cell.
While Gosha has been arrested, raids were on to nab Meetpal, said ADCP Gurpreet Singh Sikand.
Gosha is a member of the YAD core committee and also a former president of district YAD, while Meetpal, is president of the Student Organisation of India, Malwa zone.
Talking to media over the phone, Gosha alleged: “Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for the 1984 riots. He doesn’t deserve any respect. We have no regrets. We have confessed to our act by filming it and making it viral.”
Asked if he any senior Akali leader was in the loop, he said it was his and his friend Meetpal’s emotions that drove them to vandalise the statue. He said they would also do the same to Rajiv Gandhi’s statues installed elsewhere in the state.
ADCP Gurpreet Singh Sikand said a case under various sections of the IPC, IT Act, and Defacement of Public Property Act had been registered against the culprits.
Vijay Das, an old man who voluntary looks after the statue, said he noticed the two turbaned men blackening the statue around 9.30 am and immediately informed Rakesh Sharif, vice-chairman SC wing of the district Congress.
He said: “The statue was built by his guru Dalu Das in 2006. I have been looking after the same since then. No Congress leader pays attention for its upkeep. Now after the incident, leaders are now flocking to the place and have also sent the MC sanitation employees to clean the statue and its surroundings. I hope the party will take care of the statue in future.”
Bittu alleged that the act was committed by “discarded leaders” to get publicity. “If this was done at the behest of SAD chief Sukhbir Badal, then he should apologise. He should immediately sack these leaders from the party,” the MP demanded.
Ranjit Singh Dhillon, SAD district president, said he respected the emotions of the YAD leaders, but this act could have been avoided.
CM seeks Sukhbir’s apology
Chandigarh: Condemning the defacing of former PM’s statue, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh asked SAD chief Sukhbir Badal to stop indulging in petty politics. He warned him that such acts would backfire on his party in the Lok Sabha polls. He also asked Sukhbir to apologise for this obnoxious act of his party workers, who were acting on an agenda to garner votes in the ensuing polls. He alleged that in Akalis’ desperation to win public support, which it had lost due to its acts in the 10 years of its rule, the Badals and their supporters were stooping to abominable levels. “They are well aware of the fact that the Gandhis were never named or implicated in the 1984 riots.” TNS
Capt anti-sikh: SAD chief
Mansa: SAD president Sukhbir Badal on Tuesday asked CM Capt Amarinder Singh to apologise to the Sikhs and resign for “disrespecting the sentiments of the community and refusing to stand by it to expose former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s hand in the 1984 riots”. The SAD chief said it was condemnable that Amarinder was taking a stand against the Sikh community, which had “expressed its resentment against Rajiv Gandhi in Ludhiana”. Sukhbir later tweeted: “While the Congress refused to let police come to the rescue of the Sikhs in 1984, it move swiftly to arrest those who blackened Rajiv Gandhi’s bust in Ludhiana. Such is Cong justice.”
