CHANDIGARH; The Akali Dal (B) president, Prakash Singh Badal, Tuesday reacted sharply to indiscriminate and unwarranted searches of houses of innocent and law-abiding citizens in Delhi in the wake of the kidnapping of the Romanian charge affaires, Liviu Rado.

In a statement here, the former chief minister said by subjecting over 50,000 houses of innocent Sikhs to humiliating searches without even a clue to the identity or location of the wanted persons, the govt had proved that it regarded every Sikh as a suspect .The action revealed the government’s utter incompetence. In addition, the police, instead of feeling any sense of guilt, was proudly calling it an achievement, he added.

Badal said his party had always been committed to a peaceful and democratic struggle for the removal of the grievances of the Sikhs and Punjabis but there was No justification for subjecting innocent citizens to the disgrace of wanton searches. He asked whether the Delhi police was acting on the basis of any evidence or was merely proceeding on the assumption that every Sikh was 8 criminal. He urged all right- thinking people in the country to condemn the government action which was an attempt to hide its own incompetence and corn mural basis.

Reacting to reports of Army deployment in Punjab he said the govt had learnt nothing from its disastrous Punjab policy. It was continuing to treat the problem purely as one of law and order. Successive govt’s have sought to solve the problem through deployment of police and paramilitary forces with disastrous results. Such attempts were bound to fail in the future too, he added.

NOT TO BE STIFLED: Sikh history was proof that the community’s voice could not be crushed through blind repression. The only way to win the community was through love and rust, Badal asserted.

He wondered how the re-induction of troops could be justified when the govt had barely months ago announced their withdrawal. Even the governor and the DGP have been repeatedly asserted that there was no need to deploy troops, he pointed out. The crores of rupees being spent on the movement of troops into the state could have been spent on welfare activities to ameliorate the lot of the suffering

People here, he added.

Article extracted from this publication >> October 25, 1991