VOICE OF EX-SERVICEMEN PUNJAB

Quran desecration: AAP MLA grilled for 9 hours

DENIES ALLEGATION Delhi legislator Naresh Yadav gets support from Muslim constituents, says police behaved badly; co-accused says has never met him

From page 01 SANGRUR: Police grilled Aam Aadmi Party’s Delhi legislator Naresh Yadav for nine hours on Saturday at the crime investigation agency (CIA) head office here. The Mehrauli MLA is prime accused in the June 24 Quran desecration at Muslimdominated Malerkotla.

am Aadmi Party’s Delhi legislator Naresh Yadav (left) arriving at the crime investigation agency head office in Sangrur on Saturday for interrogation in the June 24 desecration case.

Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann, AAP state convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur, and lawyer Himmat Singh Shergill accompanied him to the CIA office, where Yadav was interrogated from 11.15am to 8pm and co-accused Kewal Sangha questioned for five hours. “Yadav cannot do anything like this (disrespect Quran). During Ramzan, he visits every Muslim house in his constituency,” said Raees Ahmed, a Muslim among Yadav’s 25 supporters who came over from Mehrauli.Co-accused Kewal Sangha said he didn’t know Yadav. “We have never met or had a talk about any `1-crore deal,” he said.

Before the interrogation, the MLA said he was available to police at all times. “Even if they keep me till midnight, I will answer each question,” he said. “The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) knows it has lost its base in the state, so it is finding ways to look good in people’s eyes by laying allegation on others.

MP Bhagawant Mann said: “Everyone knows who is behind the Malerkotla incident. The AAP will cooperate with Punjab Police till the end of the investigation.” Senior superintendent of police Pritpal Singh Thind, SP (detectives) Jaskaranjit Singh Teja, DSP (headquarters) William Jeji, and CIA in-charge Satnam Singh were the interrogators. The MLA says the cops behaved badly, grilled him over and again, and used foul language. “I had my worst day,” said Yadav. “No matter how hard police or the SAD try to scare me, I will not step back.”

He declined to tell the media what the interrogators had asked him; and said he had been framed because of political vendetta.

SSP Thind denied the allegation of bad police behaviour. “We asked him about another sacrilege incident as well. We grilled him for nine hours and still a few answers were not satisfactory. He has links with the other accused and we have a strong evidence of it. We will call him again and seek his arrest warrant from court,” he said.

AAP says Akali, Cong posters ‘hurt Sikhs’, they cry ‘fake’

CHANDIGARH: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesman Sukhpal Singh Khaira alleged on Saturday that Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Congress leaders had hurt religious sentiments of Sikhs allegedly by using pictures of Golden Temple, Amritsar, with symbols of their parties on propaganda material. This came in response to a case against AAP leaders over the cover of its youth manifesto released a week ago; but both parties reacted by saying that the posters shown by Khaira were fake.At a press conference, Khaira showed a poster of Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh next to the Golden Temple with the party’s symbol, the right hand, in a corner. The poster talked about tubewell connections given during the Congress-led UPA regime at the Centre. In the SAD poster, the party symbol, scales, is on top of pictures of the Golden Temple and Virasat-e-Khalsa memorial in Anandpur Sahib; announcing free bus service between the two places for women. Demanding an apology from chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, his deputy and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal, and from Amarinder, Khaira said they should be booked.In reaction, a Congress spokesperson said, “The picture has been mischievously crafted using Photoshop. AAP’s dirty tricks department has used its expertise to create something that never existed.”

“I challenge Khaira to prove the poster’s authenticity,” said SAD’s information technology (IT) wing head Parminder Singh Brar.

Khaira claimed he had downloaded the two posters from official Facebook pages of Amarinder and Sukhbir. “Let the Congress and the SAD prove the posters are fake; I have snapshots of the Facebook posts.” A MYSTERY VIDEO

AAP leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira holding the Akali and Congress posters in Chandigarh on Saturday.

Khaira also released an undated video purportedly run by a vernacular news channel showing SAD leaders Prem Singh Chandumajra (now MP) and Surjit Singh Rakhra (now minister) and Congress leader Preneet Kaur (former union minister and now MLA) allegedly applying vermillion to Guru Granth Sahib during a religious ceremony. This was termed against Sikh tenets by Khaira, who said he had crosschecked the authenticity of the video but did not know when and where the ceremony took place. “I am sure it is not older than 2014, when Chandumajra was elected MP,” he said, and later put the video on his Twitter account too.

Chandumajra said the ceremony took place in the late 1990s and the Akal Takth took notice of the matter. “It had become a big issue then,” he said, “It is unfortunate that AAP leaders are digging out these things to save themselves. If Khaira has become the devil’s advocate, he should use his energies on defending AAP’s mistakes.”

Kishor stamp on Capt show at Balachaur

AMARINDER ANSWERS CRITICS BY MINGLING WITH COMMON PEOPLE, WHILE CONG POLL STRATEGIST KEEPS LOCAL LEADERS AWAY

BALACHAUR (SHAHEED BHAGAT SINGH NAGAR): Congress poll strategist Prashant Kishor kept local leader out of the show, as state party president Captain Amarinder Singh made most of his direct connect with voters here on Saturday.

Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh listening to a participant during ‘Halke Vich Captain’ programme at Balachaur in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district on Saturday.

Credited with helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) come to power at the Centre in 2014 and the Janata Dal (United) retain Bihar in 2015, Prashant Kishor is said to be behind the success of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. The Congress has hired him to turn its fortunes in the 2017 Punjab polls after two consecutive debacles.Saturday’s ‘Halqe Vich Captain’ programme included a ‘Lokan Da Durbar’ segment, in which the royal scion of Patiala listened to public grievances at the packed venue. Unlike the ‘Punjab Dialogue’ show of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), where long speeches follow every question, Kishor’s event had just 25 straight questions that Amarinder picked up from a box and gave short answers to, besides adding the element of offering monetary help to four people on the spot.

To some visitors, the questions appeared soft and not randomly selected. In the end, Amarinder mingled with the crowd for about an hour until the marriage palace was empty. “We are glad to see the Punjab Congress president in a new avatar. The impressive, downto-earth interaction is a good reply to those who accuses him of being a high-flying Maharaja and say the Congress has died in the state,” said Satwinder Singh, a participant from Jatpur village.

Less drinking water and too many wild animals were main local issues that came up. Kishor’s Indian Political Affairs Committee (I-PAC) volunteers, most of them from outside Punjab, managed the stage, limiting the role of local party leaders to just fetching crowd.

After this, Amarinder sat with the media, and even then, the I-PAC team kept senior leaders away from him.

DPO objects to Akali Dal’s ‘blasphemous’ act, shifted

Raj Sadosh

Abohar, July 9

Block Development and Panchayat Officer (BDPO) Baljit Kaur Dhillon was transferred to the state headquarters after she objected to SAD leaders’ picture with “Çhar Sahibzade” (four sons of Guru Gobind Singh) on vans used in the screening of the movie with the same name. She had raised an objection through a Facebook post.

The pictures were displayed on vans used in the screening of the movie at Burajmuhar village by the Public Relations Department recently. Baljit Kaur said: “It (the picture) pricked my conscience, so I decided to raise an objection.” On July 2, she posted a comment on Facebook in Punjabi, criticising the pictures of SAD leaders along with “Char Sahibzade”.

“No Sikh can tolerate disrespect to our gurus. I am ready to make any sacrifice in the honour of our gurus,” she said.

Sukhjit Singh Bains, Director, Rural Development and Panchayat, said the transfer was an administrative decision.

Akalis behind Quran sacrilege: Brar

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, July 9

Convener of Pehlan Punjab Lokhit Abhiyan Jagmeet Brar today said: “The seed we planted in Chapper Chiri is fast growing into a statewide movement against drugs and suicides.”

Addressing representatives of the Malwa constituency, Brar claimed: “People of Punjab, especially the youth, have shown a massive response to our efforts as is visible from the membership of 22 lakh people.”

Brar said in the last one month, volunteers had visited over 2,000 villages across Punjab. Feedback showed that the topmost problem in Punjab today was the death of village economy due to high debt, drug abuse and unemployment.

He alleged that there was a total collapse of law and order in Punjab. The recent desecration of Quran in Malerkotla showed a clear pattern of deliberate actions by the Akalis to disturb communal harmony in the state, he alleged.

He also alleged that the recruitment scam might have its roots in Kolianwali's house, but the fruit had reached CM’s house.