Mohammad Izhar Alam: a man of contradictions

Yet his candidature as an Akali candidate is nothing less than a shock even for his die hard fans.

Activist and a journalist,Jatinder Pannu,who has been a one time close aide of Alam says,“He is controversial figure. His personal requirements and compulsions have probably forced him to join the a party he was dead against.”

Pannu said that even Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal needs to refer back to his statement he gave in Ludhiana in the late 80s when terrorist Gurjant Singh Tajsthani was killed. “Badal spewed venom against Alam and now he says he does not recall any thing against this officer.”

Recounting an incident with Alam,Pannu said,“In 1988,terrorists had killed 11 people in a village near Attari border. I was their with senior Left leader Satpal Dang. A huge police party led by K P S Gill was also there. Fearing terrorist attacks,no villager was ready to lend a tractor trolley to shift the bodies to the mortuary. It was then that somebody from the village began serving water. Dang and Gill drank the water,but Alam threw the glass down and shouted that he would not drink water from a village that can not show respect to its own dead”.

Many like Pannu cannot forget how as an SSP of Amritsar during the late 80s,Alam worked in an area which was then called as the Liberated Area of Khalistan by the separatists. “And now Alam uses his words very carefully and tactfully when he says no officer from the Punjab police killed any Sikh youth in false encounters”.

Alam himself declines to comment on the controversy surrounding him. He explains his situation as,“Kuch toh majboorian rahin hogi,yuun hee toon nahin koi bewafa hota”.