Jalandhar: Although the reasons for the prevailing crisis in Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the upheaval within the Sikh polity are usually projected as religious, they fundamentally stem from issues of justice and equitable law enforcement. Law was not allowed to take its own course in multiple cases and at multiple levels. Rather, the govt and law enforcement agencies helped those who were on the wrong side of the law.
In the four points outlined by the SAD Sudhar Lehar leaders in their complaint to Akal Takht, which were read out by the Akal Takht Jathedar to SAD former president Sukhbir Singh Badal as charges against him, only one — pardon to Sirsa dera chief by the Akal Takht — pertained to the religious domain. That too was a case of using state and political influence over religious affairs.
The other three points — withdrawing the 2007 blasphemy case against the Sirsa dera chief, failure to find and punish the accused in sacrilege cases of 2015, police firing at peacefully protesting Sikhs and killing two of them at Behbal Kalan, appointment of Sumedh Saini as DGP and rewarding former DGP Izhar Alam despite serious allegations of fake encounters against them — pertained to the justice delivery system.
In the blasphemy case of May 2007, in which Sirsa dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim was accused of imitating Guru Gobind Singh and there was huge turmoil in the state, even the state home department gave sanction for his prosecution.
But the justice delivery system was blocked and the charge-sheet was never filed in the trial court, even as a senior Punjab Police officer filed an affidavit in the Punjab and Haryana high court stating that the case was registered against the dera chief after investigations and they had enough evidence to prosecute him. Instead, police filed a cancellation report in a Bathinda court just ahead of the 2012 assembly elections. In Aug 2014, the district and sessions judge, Bathinda, discharged the dera chief on the ground that the charge-sheet was not presented against him within the stipulated time of three years and accepted the cancellation report.
In the case of sacrilege, the issue was primarily of enforcement of law as initially it was a case of theft of “bir” of Guru Granth Sahib from the gurdwara of Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village, Faridkot district, on June 1, 2015. The final act of sacrilege happened well after four months on Oct 12, that too after an abusive warning through posters, at least two weeks before the final act. In this connection, Sudhar Lehar’s allegation was that there was a failure in finding the culprits and getting them punished.
The police firing at Behbal Kalan on Oct 14, 2015, was also found blatantly illegal and even a murder case was registered against unidentified police officials initially, and action against them happened during the Congress regime.
The issue of appointment of Sumedh Saini as Punjab DGP and the induction of former DGP Izhar Alam in the SAD and giving his wife an assembly ticket, even though both the top officers faced allegations of extrajudicial killings in Punjab, also pertained to helping or rewarding those who faced allegations of gross illegalities, whereas before coming to power in 1997, Parkash Singh Badal promised justice in such cases.