Amritsar, Punjab (September 30, 2013): Reacting to the statement of Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde that no innocent Muslim youth should be wrongfully detained in the name of terror, the Dal Khalsa drew Shinde’s attention towards wrongful detention of Sikh youth in Punjab and elsewhere under the garb of fighting “militancy” and urged him to take up their cases also.
Notably, Home Minister Shinde has shot off a letter to Chief Ministers, expressing his reservation on alleged harassment of innocent Muslim youth by law enforcement agencies.
Party head H S Dhami cited the unwarranted detention of Kulvir Singh Barapind –the only opposition member of the SGPC and President of the Akali Dal (Panch Pardhani) and Daljit Singh under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
“It is most disgusting that the two leaders were tortured and their family members were harassed and maltreated”, he rued.
The statement reads: Daljit Singh is a political dissenter and he is inconvenient to the present establishment of Punjab. It is in pursuance of this undemocratic mission that the Badal led government continues to gag him and prolong his detention.
In the last one month, under one pretext or another, but ostensibly with the same-old reason of curbing militancy in Punjab, there have been a string of arrests under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, he said and accused the ruling Akali Dal-BJP government of deploying the police for political purposes.
The Dal Khalsa leader further said there was classic example of violation of rights of a prisoner, namely Lal Singh @ Manjit Singh convicted for life imprisonment. He has spent 21 years behind bars, even though the maximum imprisonment is 14 years.
He said the Home Minister has rightly realized though lately that the minority youth have started feeling that they are deliberately targeted and deprived of their basis civil, political as well as human rights.