Badal offers himself for arrest

Former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Friday rang upstate DGP Dinkar Gupta and offered himself for arrest.

The senior Badal told the DGP that he was in Chandigarh on Thursday and could wait if he was to be arrested.

“Otherwise, I am available for arrest whenever and wherever you want me,” Badal told the DGP on phone.

The senior Badal is apprehending action by the special investigating team probing the killing of Sikhs protesting incidents of sacrilege in Punjab.

Badal asked Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh to put a stop to the ‘high drama’ being enacted in the name of a probe into the Kot Kapura and Behbal Kalaan incidents.

Instead, he said, Amarinder should tell him where he should come and offer himself for arrest since that was the sole aim of the political witch-hunt underway.

“Even before any inquiry was instituted into these incidents, Amarinder Singh and Congress chief Sunil Jakhar and their senior party and cabinet colleagues had been pronouncing me guilty,” he said.

Badal, who was unwell and had proceeded on leave from Vidhan Sabha session after informing the Speaker of his indisposition, rushed back from his village to Chandigarh this morning when he learns that he had been named guilty and that the chief minister had reiterated his veiled threat against him.

“All my life I have faced repression, torture and political vendetta of the worst kind from the anti-Sikh and anti-Punjab Congress party. But no one and nothing has ever succeeded in deterring me from the path of standing by my convictions and fighting for the interests of the Khalsa Panth, Punjab and the country,” Badal said.

He advised Amarinder that there is no point in targeting and harassing the whole state administration.

He said all designs of theirs (the Congress) can be satisfied by putting him behind the bars.

“I am ready to offer myself for arrest any day, anytime and anywhere,” he said.