Amarinder accuses SAD of shedding 'crocodile tears' over sacrilege issue

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Wednesday accused the SAD of shedding crocodile tears over the state-wide desecration of religious texts in 2015, asserting that his government would take the matter to its logical end.

Singh's made the statement a day after Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal said the opposition party would challenge the CBI closure report filed in a Mohali court in the 2015 Faridkot sacrilege incidents.

Badal had also vowed to take all legal, constitutional and political steps to get the probe by the central investigating agency reopened and take it to its logical conclusion.

The CBI had on July 4 filed closure reports in the Mohali court in three cases of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib in 2015.

The chief minister lashed out at Badal for trying to fool people by pretending to be concerned about the issue.

Instead of probing the matter himself, Sukhbir, who was then deputy chief minister and home minister of the state, had sent the first three cases related to the Bargari (sacrilege) issue to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said the chief minister.

Now that the CBI has completed its probe and filed a closure report, Sukhbir is getting the jitters, indicating complicity at some level in the entire affair, Singh said in a statement here.

How else the SAD's move to challenge the CBI closure report in court can be explained, asked Singh, slamming the SAD chief.

The chief minister also accused Badal of seeking to politicize the sensitive issue, possibly to wriggle out of his own responsibility in ensuring a fair and thorough probe into the matter under the previous SAD-BJP rule.

Singh asked Badal, now the Ferozepur MP, not to forget the simple fact that even now, when the CBI has filed the closure report which he wants to challenge, it is the NDA government in power at the Centre, with the SAD being one of its allies.

It is time to stop trying to fool the people by twisting facts and raising false flags, he said.

Reiterating his promise to bring to book all those involved in the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib and the subsequent police firing on peaceful protestors, Singh said his government was committed to expose the entire conspiracy behind the incident.

Nobody can be allowed to get away with such brazen attempts to spread disharmony in the state, he asserted.

The chief minister, meanwhile, asked the state's Advocate General Atul Nanda to look into all the legal options to take the case to its logical conclusion.

Notably, the previous SAD-BJP regime had handed over the three cases pertaining to the sacrilege in Faridkot in 2015 to the CBI for probe.

But last year, the Congress government had decided to take them back from the CBI and handed them over to the special investigation team of the Punjab police.