No clean chit to Badals in sacrilege case: Punjab CM

Captain Amarinder Singh has denied giving any clean chit to Badals in the sacrilege case. He said the report published in an English daily is wrong and there was no truth in that.

New Delhi: Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday made it clear that he had not given any clean chit to Badals over their alleged involvement in the sacrilege case, which, according to him, was "more than manifest in their hobnobbings with Dera Sacha Sauda" and their recent attempts to scuttle the probe by influencing the closure report of the CBI.

The chief minister was reacting to a news story published in an English daily. "At no point did I say Prakash Singh Badal or his son Sukhbir (Singh Badal) were not involved in the sacrilege. As is evident from the reported interview itself, all I have said was that Badal did not himself go and tear up the Guru Granth Sahib. But that does not rule out his involvement in the matter,” he said in a press note released in Chandigarh.

"They (the Badals) were as responsible as the men who had indulged in the actual act of desecration that had cascaded into such a grave chain of events for the state and its people", it quoted the chief minister as saying.

"They not only failed to prevent the large number of cases of sacrilege that happened under their watch but also allowed the culprits to go scot free," he said in the press note.

The CM also expressed concern over the attempt to "misrepresent and give a completely erroneous twist to his statements". He said the Badals, being in power at the time, were totally responsible for the events that led to the sacrilege and the subsequent police firing, as he had maintained all along

"They could not shrug off their culpability on this count, which was as grave a crime as actually tearing off the pages of the Holy book," he added.