Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Friday said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government had got jittery after party president Sukhbir Singh Badal exposed its Rs 500 crore excise scam and that this was the reason why Rural Development and Panchayat minister Kuldeep Dhaliwal had leveled wild allegations against the SAD president with regard to the Kotkapura firing case.
In a statement here, senior SAD leaders Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra, Sikander Singh Maluka and Virsa Singh Valtoha said “this is a clear case of a minister trying to influence a case which is under investigation. The AAP government is following in the footsteps of the erstwhile Congress government to launch a witch hunt against its political opponents”.
The SAD leaders said the minister had announced that Sukhbir Badal was guilty in the Kotkapura firing incident even before completion of investigation in the case. “Is he the investigating officer in the case? It seems the AAP government wants to coerce police officers to implicate senior SAD leaders in the case fraudulently”. The leaders also asked the SIT head to clarify if he had been given directions to frame the SAD president and senior leaders in the case.
Asserting that Dhaliwal’s statement indicated that the AAP government was bent upon vendetta politics, the SAD leaders said “Sukhbir Badal is yet to join investigation in the case and has been summoned by the SIT on August 30 but the AAP government has already delivered its judgment in the case” .
They said this was being done despite the fact that no Commission or court had indicted Sukhbir Badal in any case concerning police firing or the Bargari sacrilege case in which he had got a clean chit.