Go to your old age home, Congress tells Badal

With another case of alleged harassment of two teenaged Dalit girls by staff of a private bus owned by a ruling Akali Dal leader in Punjab's Muktsar district, the opposition Congress slammed the state government for the law and order breakdown and suggested that Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal should go to his "old age home".

"Chief Minister Badal should resign as his writ had stopped running in the administration as the state had turned into a jungle raj going by yet another alarming case of molestation of two Dalit girls by the conductor of a bus they were travelling in.

"It is high time, at the age of 92, that he should retire to the old age home that be had built in his native village," Congress' state unit chief Partap Singh Bajwa said in a statement here on Friday.

The girls alleged that the bus conductor harassed and misbehaved with them. Muktsar is Badal's home district.

"Here is the state where women are the most unsafe as the predators are everywhere... enjoy the patronage of the people in power. Coming close on the heels of molestation and death of young Arshdeep who was pushed down by the staff of a speeding Orbit transport bus, here is yet another shocking case. The bus belongs to a transport company owned by the Akali Dal leader Hardeep Singh Dhillon," Bajwa said.

He pointed out it was the same company whose bus was recently stopped by youth, who were immediately arrested. The youth, including a 13-year-old, were booked for attempt to murder but this charge was dropped after the Congress protested.

Bajwa said that the Muktsar police had refused to register a case on the complaint of the father of the girls, in violation of the Supreme Court directions.

"It is clear that goonda elements had been recruited by the men in the ruling party, who have turned the state into mafia raj. These people have no fear of the law. The police were busy in protecting the business interests of the Akali leaders, be it sand mafia or transport mafia," he said.