Youth Akali leaders deface Rajiv statue in Ludhiana, one arrested
Congress leaders wash statue with milk, one even uses his turban to clean it
LUDHIANA : Two Youth Akali Dal (YAD) leaders along with nearly a dozen of their supporters blackened the statue of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in the Salem Tabri area of Ludhiana city on Tuesday morning, alleging that he played a key role in the 1984 anti-sikh riots.
Swinging into action after Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh took to Twitter to denounce the incident and claimed to have ordered the police department to take action against the culprits, the city police registered a case against YAD leaders Gurdeep Singh Gosha, Meetpal Singh Dugri and others and arrested Gosha by afternoon.
Gosha is a former YAD district president while Dugri is a former Malwa zone-iii president of Student Organisation of India (SOI), the student wing of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
Dugri and others were on the run till filing of the report.
Additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP-I) Gurpreet Singh Sikand said the case was registered against Gosha and Dugri and 10 unidentified persons under Section 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language) of the Indian Penal Code; Section 68 of the Information Technology (IT) Act and Section 3 of the Public Property Defacement Act. The case was registered on the complaint on a municipal corporation employee.
The incident took place at around 9am when the two YAD leaders along with their supporters reached a public park at Piru Bandi locality in the Salem Tabri area. While Gosha sprayed black paint on Rajiv’s statue, Meetpal put red paint on it.
They then demanded the withdrawal of Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award, from Rajiv Gandhi and rechristening Khel Ratna award named after him. Gosha and Dugri said Congress leader Sajjan Kumar, who was given life imprisonment by the Delhi high court, was a mere henchman of Rajiv Gandhi.
Nearly two hour later, Gursimran Singh Mand, vice-chairman of the local bodies cell of state Congress unit, reached there and cleaned the statue with his turban. Soon after, Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu along with district Congress president Gurpreet Singh Goggi and other party members also arrived and washed the statue with milk. A video of cleaning was uploaded on social media.
Workers of the Congress Seva Dal blackened the posters of SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal. A heavy police force was deployed in the area to avert any clash between Congress and SAD supporters.
“The SAD workers should blacken the face of Parkash Singh Badal (former CM) and his son Sukhbir Badal for orchestrating the sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib. The targeting of the statue shows the frustration of SAD and BJP leaders who are sensing defeat in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections,” MP Bittu said.
The incident occurred a day after Sukhbir claimed that the anti-sikh riots were engineered by Rajiv Gandhi.
Before his arrest, Gosha said, “How we can forget Rajiv Gandhi remark that ‘when a big tree falls, the ground is bound to shake’ in reaction to his mother Indira Gandhi’s assassination and justifying the riots in Delhi? So many innocent Sikhs were killed for no fault of theirs at the behest of Rajiv Gandhi. His (Rajiv’s) hands are soaked in blood.”