Chandigarh- The Shiromani Akali Dal on Thursday rejected the reconstituted Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab to probe the 328 unaccounted 'swaroops' of the Guru Granth Sahib, while claiming a new team had been formed solely because the old SIT refused to follow illegal orders to implicate party chief Sukhbir Badal in the case.
Reacting to the development, senior leaders Maheshinder Singh Grewal and Parambans Singh Romana, while asserting that the AAP government was indulging in cheap politics, said that the aim of this SIT also remains the same -- to use the excuse of the unaccounted ‘swaroops’ to target the SAD President.
They also questioned why officers who were under a cloud, including the new Chairman Nanak Singh, who was being probed for his role in the police assault on an army officer and those who had an axe to grind against the SAD government, like Gurbans Singh Bains, had been included in the SIT.
Grewal and Romana also noted that the AAP government has disregarded the directive of the Akal Takht jathedar to appoint only 'amritdhari' officers to the SIT, as they could observe the required ‘maryada’ while probing the case.
The leaders warned the SIT officers not to indulge in any wrongdoing at the instance of the AAP leadership. They said the entire Sikh community was watching the manner in which the probe into the unaccounted ‘swaroops’ was being conducted by the AAP government.
Contending that the devotees understand that the ‘swaroops’ are not missing as all of them were dispatched to ‘gurughars’ and that the issue is one of accounting for them only, the Akali Dal leaders warned that if the SIT officers use the excuse of investigation to register false cases against the SAD leadership, they should be prepared to face the repercussions as per law, as everyone is equal before the law.