Balwant Garg
Tribune News Service
Faridkot, July 2
Probing the six-year-old incident of police firing on Sikh protesters at Kotkapura, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Punjab Police on Friday recorded the statements of many persons, including Panthic leaders Panthpreet Singh and Rupinder Singh Panjgrain, both key and prime witnesses to the Kotkapura police firing incident of October 14, 2015.
The SIT had also summoned Bhai Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale, one of the prime witnesses, but he could not make it before the SIT today.
In his statement to the SIT, Panthpreet Singh alleged that on October 14, 2015, the police used teargas shells, cane-charged protesters and fired in the air at a chowk in Kotkapura to disperse peaceful protesters.
In his statement to the SIT, he claimed that after the sacrilege incident at a gurdwara in Bargari on October 12, 2015, the Sikh sangat had moved to Kotkapura and started a peaceful protest dharna.
Next day, on October 13, Ranbir Singh Khatra, the then IGP, reached the dharna site and the participants offered their arrest to him.
“The police arrested us in full public view but instead of sending us to jail, they released us after four hours as their motive was just to disperse the gathering,” claimed Panthpreet.
“We again assembled at the chowk and resumed the dharna. On October 14, the police asked us to offer arrest. We agreed but asked them to send us directly to the jail and not harass us like the previous day. But all of sudden, the police resorted to unprovoked use of force, used teargas to disperse protesters and opened firing in the air to scare them away,” he said.
“Many innocent persons were injured in this use of force by the police and a large number of them were put under arrest and sent to the judicial custody for two days,” he said.
On October 14, 2015, immediately after the police firing incident, a criminal case was registered against 15 protesters, including Bhai Panthpreet Singh and Bhai Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale, for the alleged offence of instigating the protesters to attack the police with sharp-edged weapons and opening fire on cops.
However, in August last year, the SIT headed by then IGP Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh had declared about 20 persons, including both these Sikh preachers as innocent.
Panthpreet Singh rued that the FIR in the case against them was still not cancelled despite the state police declaring them innocent and they were entangled in a false case.
Police firing: SIT records Panthic leader’s statement
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