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Former Punjab Deputy Chief Minister summoned as Behbal Kalan investigation gathers renewed political momentum.
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president and former Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal will appear before the Punjab government’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Monday for questioning in connection with the 2015 Behbal Kalan police firing and sacrilege cases, in a politically significant development that comes days after Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann publicly declared that “it is now Sukhbir Badal’s turn to go to jail.”
The SIT has summoned Badal to appear at 11 am as part of its renewed investigation into one of Punjab’s most sensitive and politically consequential cases. The summons follows weeks of intensified activity by the newly constituted SIT, which has questioned several former political leaders and bureaucrats while revisiting the crime scenes in Faridkot district.
The development assumes political significance as it comes less than a week after Mann, while addressing a public rally in Mukerian, directly targeted the Akali Dal leadership over the 2015 incidents.
Addressing the gathering, Mann said, “Sukhbir, now it is your turn,” alleging that the former Deputy Chief Minister and his relatives would face imprisonment for their alleged role in the sacrilege incidents and the subsequent police firing. He also accused previous governments of weakening the investigation and preventing effective prosecution.
The Chief Minister claimed that his government had rebuilt the cases after spending considerable time correcting deficiencies in the earlier investigations and asserted that justice would finally be delivered.
Badal calls summons political vendetta
Reacting to the SIT notice, Sukhbir Badal said he would cooperate fully with the investigation but accused the Aam Aadmi Party government of using the probe for political purposes ahead of the Assembly elections.
“They can summon me as many times as they want and I will appear every time. Ten years have passed and not even a chargesheet has been filed. This is nothing but a bundle of lies. Instead of identifying the real culprits, they are playing politics. Only a few months remain before the Assembly election. Let them do whatever politics they want. When we return to power, we will identify and punish the real culprits,” Badal said.
Probe gathers pace
The SIT, headed by DIG Harjeet Singh, has accelerated its investigation over the past month. Investigators recently recreated the sequence of events at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala, Bargari and Behbal Kalan, where the sacrilege incidents and subsequent police firing took place. The team also revisited Bajakhana police station to examine original case records and investigation documents.
The SIT has also questioned former Union Minister and BJP leader Vijay Sampla, retired IAS officer Gagandeep Singh Brar, former Faridkot Deputy Commissioner Malwinder Singh Jaggi and former Akali MLA Mantar Singh Brar as part of the investigation.
The 2015 controversy
The investigation relates to a series of sacrilege incidents reported in Faridkot district in 2015, when copies of the Guru Granth Sahib were stolen from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village and torn pages of the Sikh holy scripture were later found scattered near Bargari village, triggering statewide protests.
On October 14, 2015, police opened fire on protesters at Behbal Kalan, killing two persons, Krishan Bhagwan Singh and Gurjit Singh, while several others were injured. Police also used force against protesters at Kotkapura on the same day.
The incidents sparked widespread outrage and became a major political issue in Punjab, contributing significantly to the decline of the then SAD-BJP government.
With Sukhbir Badal’s appearance before the SIT scheduled for Monday, the renewed investigation is expected to once again place the decade-old sacrilege and police firing cases at the centre of Punjab’s political discourse, with both the ruling Aam Aadmi Party and the opposition Shiromani Akali Dal seeking to shape the narrative ahead of the forthcoming Assembly elections.
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