Chandigarh, Nov 29 (IANS) The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday said the arrest of Kanchanpreet Kaur, the daughter of the party’s Tarn Taran candidate Sukhwinder Kaur Randhawa, in the recently held Assembly bypoll, was a violation of the orders of the high court.
He thanked the court for interceding and putting on hold any police remand in the case till it is heard by the trial court.
The SAD’s legal cell head, Arshdeep Singh Kler, said Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, the DGP, and top police officers had challenged the high court order after it had given interim bail to Kanchanpreet in four cases by adding non-bailable offences in another case registered against her.
“It is clear that the AAP government has forced the police to arrest Kanchanpreet in an act of vengeance, ” he said in a statement. Asserting that the AAP government was trying to create a false narrative against Kanchanpreet, the SAD legal cell head said, “The fact of the matter is that no criminal case was registered against her before the elections”.
Kler said police officers who had registered the false cases against her and had now arrested her without following due norms would be answerable for their patently illegal acts. The SAD leader stated he filed a petition in the high court on Saturday, and during the course of which directions had been given to the trial court not to give any remand in the case till Kanchanpreet’s advocates reached the court.
“Accordingly, the trial court will decide whether the non-bailable offence added in the bailable FIR was correct or not.”
Meanwhile, the Akali Dal said that by targeting a young woman leader with fabricated charges, the government had shown that it had no respect for the daughters of Punjab or for the rule of law. Senior leader Daljit Singh Cheema appealed to all democratic, social and women organisations to rise above political differences and condemn this heinous misuse of power. “This evil must be nipped in the bud. Such unconstitutional actions cannot be allowed to continue on the sacred land of our great Gurus, ” he added.