Punjab Congress Leader Partap Bajwa Moves High Court Seeking Quashing Of FIR Against Him Over His '50 Bombs’ Remark

Chandigarh: Senior Punjab Congress leader Partap Bajwa on Tuesday moved Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking quashing of the FIR registered against him over his recent `50 bombs had reached Punjab’ statement.

Bajwa who is also leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Punjab assembly, had recently said in an interview to a private television channel that he had come to know that 50 bombs had reached Punjab of which 18 had exploded while 32 were yet to explode.

Bajwa was booked on Sunday night by Punjab cyber crime police under Sections 197 (1)(d) (false and misleading information that endangers the country’s sovereignty and unity) and 353(2) (false statements intend to create enmity and hatred or ill will), a non-bailable offence of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). A police team had on Sunday itself visited his residence and questioned him about the source of his statement.

Stating that a petition has been filed in the high court to quash the FIR submitting that the charges against Bajwa were baseless, his counsel said that it has been listed for Wednesday.

PARTY RALLIES BEHIND BAJWA

Meanwhile, lashing out at chief minister Bhagwant Mann over what they held as political vendetta against Bajwa, the top leaders of the party and a number of workers accompanied him to the Mohali police station where he had been summoned in connection with the case mentioned above.

They held that the national leaders including the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi were in regular touch with the state leadership and were closely monitoring the situation.

The leaders included state Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, former deputy chief minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, former Speaker Rana KP Singh, former minister Brahm Mohindra and others.

Warring told newspersons that what Bajwa had said in his interview, had already been reported by a leading Hindi daily giving a detailed list of grenade attacks, which were reported from different parts of the state, which were initially dismissed by the police as the tyre bursts and cylinder blasts.