Day after father, Sukhbir Badal quizzed in Behbal Kalan police firing case

Sukhbir, who was then deputy CM and held the home portfolio, was questioned for around an hour-and-a-half at Punjab Police Officers’ Institute in Chandigarh’s Sector 32.

The IG Naunihal-led SIT had also questioned Sukhbir in Behbal case on September 6 for around three hours.
Sukhbir was also questioned by the SIT headed by ADGP L K Yadav in June last year in connection with the Kotkapura police firing incident. The police had fired on a gathering which was protesting against the sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib in Bargari village on October 12, 2015. The Yadav-led SIT had questioned Sukhbir last month (on September 14) for around six hours.

Sukhbir was also questioned at Punjab police headquarters by then SIT headed by IG Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh (now an AAP MLA) in November 2018.

In a chargesheet filed on May 27, 2019, before the trial court in Faridkot, the Kunwar Vijay-led SIT had submitted that post-sacrilege incidents, the subsequent police firing on protesters in October 2015 was a “pre-planned handiwork” of the then deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, former state police chief Sumedh Singh Saini and Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.

On April 9 last year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had quashed the investigations and chargesheet filed by Kunwar Vijay in the Kotkapura firing case. In a hard-hitting order, the court had described the Kunwar Vijay-led SIT investigation as “political theatrics”. The court had observed that the investigation carried out by Kunwar Vijay was “not free from blemish”.