Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singhon Wednesday trashed as baseless and politically motivated the unwarrantedallegations against Advocate General Atul Nanda, as well as the legal team thatdefended the Kotkapura firing incident probe.
Stronglycountering the totally unjustified criticism of the AG, as well as otherlawyers hired by the state government to fight the case, the Chief Ministerslammed opposition parties and their leaders who were deliberately trying toprovoke public sentiment on the sensitive issue to create trouble ahead of the2022 Assembly elections.
Termingit a brazen game-plan of vested interests trying to mislead the people of thestate with their deliberately misleading statements on different aspects of thesacrilege litigation, the Chief Minister said these vested political interestswere mixing up the same as a clear ploy to confuse the people.
Contraryto what these vested interests, including leaders of the Shiromani Akali Dal(SAD) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were projecting, the fact was that the casesrelating to the sacrilege of the Sri Guru Granth Sahab, were being handledseparately in the courts from the Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan police firingcases, said the Chief Minister.
TheAG and his team had been tasked with defending the state only in the sacrilegematters, which were an emotive and sensitive issue for the people of Punjab, hesaid, pointing out that the case had been decisively won by the State in a detailed judgment rendered by aSingle Judge of the High Court on 25 January 2019, thus upholding the findingsof the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission of Inquiry, appointed by his governmentto examine the case.
Further,pointed out the Chief Minister, the single judge’s verdict was upheld, right upto the level of the Supreme Court, which helped the state recall theinvestigation into the cases of sacrilege of the Sri Guru Granth Sahab from theCBI. It was to the credit of the AG and his team, which fought the case hardand effectively in the courts, that the CBI, which had made no progress in thematter for nearly four years, was forced to hand over all the case papers tothe Punjab Police SIT on 5th February 2021, he added.
Pointingout that a separate SIT, headed not by Kunwar Vijay Pratap but by IG Parmar, isnow probing the sacrilege cases, the Chief Minister said this, in itself,falsifies all allegations of any collusion between the ruling Government andthe accused of this heinous crime. The case will be taken to its logicalconclusion, and those guilty of sacrilege of the holy Sri Guru Granth Sahabwill be punished, as a result of the concerted efforts of the AG and his team,he added.
Asfor the Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan firing cases, the AG was not even involvedin the defence, which was being undertaken by a specialized legal team from theSupreme Court headed by leading criminal lawyers Siddharth Luthra, SeniorAdvocate, Harin Raval Senior Advocate and other lawyers from Delhi, the ChiefMinister further said.
Theteam of Delhi lawyers had also been working relentlessly to defend the state inthe matter of the police firing cases’ probe, he said, asserting that he alsohad full faith in the SIT headed by Kunwar Vijay Pratap to investigate thefiring cases.
Theentire agenda of those resorting to brazen lies and fabrications to denigratethe AG and his team, as well as the legal team from Delhi, was to scuttle thestate government’s efforts to bring the guilty to justice in both, thesacrilege and the firing cases, said the Chief Minister. He made it clear that theseefforts would not succeed and the innocent will get justice, as his governmentwas committed to fulfilling every single poll promise made to the people ofPunjab.