The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government was again playing politics on sacrilege by instituting a fresh SIT in the Behbal Kalan firing case despite the fact that four charge sheets had already been submitted in the case even as it asked the government why it was not proceeding against Gurmeet Ram Raheem despite the latter having been indicted by a SIT in the Burj Jwahar Singh and Bargari sacrilege cases.
Addressing a press conference here, senior leader Parambans Singh Romana said the AAP government had started an orchestrated campaign by procuring large scale media coverage of the visit of a new SIT headed by DIG Harjit Singh to Burj Jwahar Singh and Bargari. “This is being done despite the fact that this SIT is probing the Behbal Kalan case which has nothing to do with sacrilege committed in Burj Jwahar Singh and Bargari”.
Parambans Romana said the drama was being done to divert attention from the failures of the AAP government as there was no investigation left to be done after submission of four charge sheets in the case. He said instead of doing such cheap stunts the AAP government should tell what it had done to solve the 597 cases of sacrilege which had occurred in Punjab in the last nine years.
“As many as 247 persons who were nominated in the cases were not arrested. As many as 102 cases remained untraced while 82 cases cancelled. The government should also tell what action it had taken in the sacrilege committed by its police force in Sultanpur Lodhi”, he added.
Asserting that both the Congress and AAP had consistently played politics on sacrilege, the SAD leader said “the sacrilege issue is brought to the front on the eve of every election”. He said now the government was again politicising this issue despite the fact that chief minister Bhagwant Mann had released a 467 page report on the sacrilege cases three and a half years back.
“Even though Gurmeet Ram Raheem was the prime accused the AAP government did not give sanction to initiate a case against him for three and a half years”. He said the government had soft pedalled taking action against another sacrilege accused - Pradeep Kler and had not questioned another accused - Honeypreet till now. “All this proves that the AAP government has done some deal with Sirsa Dera head”.
Mr Romana said the government was also trying to divert the attention of the people after a video in which the chief minister was seen committing a sacrilege against the Guru Sahiban. “It has become even more desperate after the video was revealed to be real and a subsequent government cover up exercise was exposed”, the Akali leader added.