Be­hbal Kalan fir­ing: For­mer DGP Saini sum­moned by SIT

Former DGP Sumedh Saini, who has also been ac­cused of scores of cases of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions dur­ing the days of the Sikh strug­gle in the last decades of the last cen­tury, has been sum­moned by the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Team, con­sti­tuted to en­quire into the po­lice fir­ing on peace­ful demon­stra­tors at Kotka­pura and Be­hbal Kalan.

SIT chief Karan Vi­jay Singh had given ad­e­quate in­di­ca­tion of im­pend­ing ar­rests in me­dia in­ter­views, even though he had re­frained from tak­ing any names.  As the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court has granted blan­ket bail to Sumedh Saini, un­der which he has to be given no­tice prior to ar­rest or ques­tion­ing, has in a re­cent in­ter­view to me­dia called ‘the ar­rest of IG Um­ranan­gal as po­lit­i­cally mo­ti­vated.’

Tak­ing ex­cep­tion to the state­ment of Sumedh Saini, Dal Khalsa spokesper­son said,   “The Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Team is pro­gress­ing in the right di­rec­tion and Sumedh Saini ‘heart in heart’ knows that his ar­rest is im­mi­nent.”

Jus­tice Ran­jit Singh Com­mis­sion had sum­moned for­mer DGP Saini a num­ber of times, but he chose not to at­tend the Com­mis­sion hear­ings. The Jus­tice Ran­jit Singh Com­mis­sion, in an in­dict­ing tone has ques­tioned the role of Sumedh Saini in the whole in­ci­dent of Kotka­pura-Be­hbal Kalan fir­ing.  The Com­mis­sion re­port clearly points the nee­dle of sus­pi­cion to­wards Saini and then even­tu­ally to­wards for­mer Chief Min­is­ter Parkash Singh Badal.

It may be noted that in re­sponse to the state­ment of Pun­jab Chief Min­is­ter Amarinder Singh say­ing ‘the Be­hbal Kalan en­quiry will go up to higher-ups’, for­mer Chief Min­is­ter reached Chandi­garh and called Pun­jab DGP Dinkar Gupta and of­fered his ar­rest.