Punjab Congress seeks Saini’s removal after CJ’s indictment

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5 Dariya News

Chandigarh , 22 Nov 2012

Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President Capt Amarinder has sought the removal of the Punjab Director General of Police Sumedh Singh Saini after his severe indictment by the then Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court Justice TS Thakur, now a sitting Supreme Court judge, in a letter written to the Chief Justice of India in 2008.In a statement issued here today, Capt Amarinder pointed out, in scathing observations made against Saini as the Director of Punjab Vigilance Bureau in 2008 for tapping the telephones, the then CJ had noted “the nature of ‘organized crime’ or case involving ‘security of the State’ were not available from the record”, as Saini had tried to make out for tapping the phones. Besides, he added, Justice Thakur has remarked, “it is difficult to appreciate the immediate provocation which the Vigilance Bureau had for demanding the permission for tapping”.The PCC President said, Saini’s attempts to tap the telephones was clearly aimed at targeting and maligning Justice Mehtab Singh Gill (rtd), who had referred his case to the CBI. “This was a clear intimidation of the judiciary aimed at threatening it that in case they went against him (Saini) he could resort to such methods”, he observed, while adding, although he had not tapped the phones of the Honourable judges, he had deliberately mentioned names of seven sitting judges with a malafide intent in his reports.Capt Amarinder said, Justice Thakur has also taken strong exception to the Saini’s handing over of all the CD recordings and reports to then Punjab Advocate General H S Mattewal, who, he has written, had no locus standi in the administrative hierarchy of Punjab, nor was there any occasion for Saini to seek his advice in the matter.Quoting the letter which Justice Thakur had written to the then Chief Justice of India Justice Balakrishnan, who had sought his comments on the issue of phone tapping by Saini, Capt Amarinder said, he (Justice Thakur) stated that he closely examined the issue of telephone tapping by scrutinizing the records and summoning the concerned officers. Until then, Justice Thakur has stated, neither the Punjab Chief Secretary Ramesh Inder Singh, nor the Punjab Home Secretary Dr B C Gupta, nor the Punjab DGP N P S Aulakh, had any inkling about the results of the phone tapping exercise, which is a clear case of Saini turning to be a law unto himself.The PCC President said, it is clear from the contents of the letter, copies of which were released to the press alongwith the statement that Saini had kept everybody including his own DGP and the Chief Secretary in the dark about the dirty games he was playing by getting phones of people tapped apparently to intimidate them for the reasons and motives best known to him.He said, Saini had become a law unto himself and he had no moral right to continue as the Director General of Punjab Police, particularly after such scathing indictment by the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court. “It is quite obvious when as Director Vigilance he did not care anything about his own boss the DGP, how will he act and behave when he is the DGP himself”, the PCC President observed about Saini, while seeking his immediate removal.The PCC President said, though Saini had taken permission from Principal Secretary (Home), Punjab, Dr B C Gupta, to tap the telephones, he did not submit the record neither to Dr Gupta nor to the Chief Secretary. He submitted the reports only after he was asked to do so. The phones were placed under surveillance on 17 April 2008 for over three months.The PCC President said, though none of the judges’ phones were tapped, but as many as nine of them figured in the Vigilance Bureau reports in one form or another, which was uncalled for.