Chandigarh: Taking on his own government over the recent Majitha hooch tragedy that claimed 24 lives, the Aam Aadmi Party (MLA) legislator from Amritsar (north) Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, on Thursday accused it of having failed to curb the police-liquor mafia in the state.
The 1998-batch, Punjab cadre IPS officer, Singh who had resigned as an inspector general of police (IGP) before joining AAP in 2021, who visited Bhangali village in Majitha sub-division of Amritsar, expressed his dissatisfaction with the police action stating that mere suspension of lower-rung officers was just an eyewash and demanded action has to be taken up the DIG level.
Singh recalled the 2020 hooch tragedy in which over 120 people had lost their lives in Amritsar and adjoining districts during the then Congress rule led by Capt Amarinder Singh, and said that Mann, then an AAP leader, had demanded murder case be registered against those responsible including the then chief minister.
Asking Mann - now the state chief minister - to live up to his own words now, the former IGP Singh said that he also has the evidence of Mann’s statement in this regard and that he had also asked a question about the spurious liquor tragedy in the assembly which was not answered.
He also recalled another tragedy that occurred in Sangrur district, the home district of Mann, last year, in which about 20 persons had died and held that in both these cases, the accused are under trial till date.
Referring to AAP 2022 poll campaigns when the party supremo Arvind Kejriwal often said that the party had officers like him (Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh) and now there will no place for gangsters and mafias, he further held that but the mafia-police nexus still call the shots in this government.
Singh said that he would take up the issue with the assembly speaker and urge him to summon a special session on the subject so that people involved in liquor mafia be identified and busted.
