Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday said the State’s special investigation team (SIT) would now investigate the “Behbal Kalan and Bargari sacrilege” cases of 2015 as the Supreme Court had rejected the CBI plea to investigate them.
He was making a statement during the Budget session of the Assembly here.
The Chief Minister informed the House that the Supreme Court had on Thursday allowed the State to carry on its investigation into the cases and the subsequent police firing, which were handed over to the CBI by the previous SAD-BJP regime.
“These cases will now be probed only by Punjab. The modalities will be announced later.” The government had announced in the House last year that the cases would be taken back from the Central agency and would be investigated by the State government.
Two persons were killed in the police firing in Behbal Kalan of Faridkot district in 2015, which followed the alleged sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib at Bargari.
Aam Aadmi Party MLA Aman Arora welcomed the decision and said the Punjab government should now ensure time-bound investigation so that the guilty could be punished.
Before the session started, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) members staged a protest outside the Assembly along with people who had received severely inflated power bills, and demanded an immediate roll back of the hike and an independent inquiry into the alleged power scam.
Legislative party leader Sharanjit Singh Dhillon and former Minister Bikram Singh Majithia said the Congress government should immediately reverse the hike and provide power to domestic and industrial consumers at ₹5 per unit as promised in its election manifesto. Dismissing the Chief Minister’s announcement of bringing out a white paper on the issue, the leaders said, “It is an excuse to divert the attention from the real problem. People are not interested in white papers. They want power at ₹5 per unit.”
