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Punjab Congress leaders protest in Bathinda after police disallows meeting with Khaira
Amarinder Singh Raja Warring says when Congress team reached Jalalabad police station, it was told Bholath MLA has been taken to Fazilka, where they were denied permission to meet him
A day after the arrest of their party MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira in a 2015 drug smuggling case, Punjab Congress leaders were not allowed to meet him in Fazilka, where he is in police custody. Alleging vendetta politics by the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party government, the leaders decided to protest against the arrest in Bathinda.
After the police declined the request of Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, leader of opposition Partap Singh Bajwa and former deputy chief minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, to meet Khaira, who is in the Fazilka crime investigation agency (CIA) custody, the PPCC chief said: “This is a very wrong thing to do. This is all vendetta politics. No case of any kind is made out. When we reached Jalalabad police station, they did not open the lock. Someone told me that the CIA staff had taken him (Khaira) to Fazilka. We reached there but were not allowed to meet Khaira. The SSP told us that there are orders from above. This (treatment) did not even exist during the British rule. Our protest will now continue in Bathinda, and we will discuss the next strategy with the leadership.”
Also read: Khaira’s arrest escalates AAP-Cong rift in Punjab
Bajwa said, “Bhagwant Maan should understand that he is not going to remain chief minister for life. We came to meet Khaira in accordance with the code of law to reassure our party members that we stand by them. It was just a courtesy call but the police did not grant us a meeting.”
Punjab Police on Thursday arrested Khaira in connection with a ₹10-crore heroin smuggling case of 2015, setting off a political firestorm between the Congress and the state’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Khaira, a three-time MLA from Bholath, was arrested from his house in Chandigarh around 6am after a police raid. He was produced in the court of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) in Fazilka district on Thursday after which he was sent in police remand for two days.
He was arrested in connection with a case registered in 2015 under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS). In 2015, two cases originated with the unearthing of a cross-border drug smuggling network in Fazilka, leading to the seizure of heroin, gold biscuits, weapons, cartridges, and Pakistani SIM cards and the second of a fake passport racket being run in Delhi.
As the trial went on, nine smugglers, including Gurdev Singh, Manjit Singh, Harbans Singh, and Subhash Chander, were sentenced in October 2017 in connection with the Fazilka case. As per the chargesheet, Khaira was closely associated with Gurdev Singh, the leader of the Fazilka drug smuggling racket, and is accused of having sheltered him.
The arrest of Khaira is expected to further dent the relations of the AAP and the Congress which have come together to form the INDIA alliance at the centre. The state unit of the Congress has opposed any tie-up or seat-sharing arrangement with the AAP in Punjab.
