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The Special Investigating Team (SIT) handling the drugs case against senior Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia has summoned him at its chairman’s office in Patiala on December 18.
Majithia was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act on December 20, 2021, during the tenure of the Congress government led by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi.
The case stemmed from a 2018 report by Harpreet Singh Sidhu, the former head of the anti-drug Special Task Force, which recommended further investigation.
Majithia took to the social media to share the contents of the summon, and said he had been expecting it. Calling it a ‘love letter’ from Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann, he alleged that the police were under pressure to summon him. He also pointed out that the High Court has issued a stay on the proceedings of the case in which the government wanted to “implicate” his wife.
Majithia has been striking an increasingly belligerent posture against the government and has also launched several personal attacks against the CM.
The Punjab Bureau of Investigation had booked Majithia under sections 25 (punishment for allowing one’s premises for its use for the commission of an offence), 27 A (punishment for financing illicit trafficking and harbouring offenders) and 29 (for abetting or plotting an offence) of the NDPS Act, at the Punjab State Crime Police Station in Mohali on December 20, 2021.
A month later, on January 24, 2022, when campaigning for the assembly elections was underway, the state counsel opposed Majithia’s bail application before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and underlined the need for custodial interrogation.
Four days after the voting concluded, the Special Investigating Team took Majithia into custody when he appeared before the Additional Sessions Judge-cum-Judge Special Court in SAS Nagar, Mohali, on February 24, 2022.
Subsequently, on the same day, it presented Majithia in the court of Mukesh Kumar Singla, Judicial Magistrate 1st Class, SAS Nagar. Instead of seeking police remand for custodial interrogation, the SIT requested for his judicial custody. There were no further remand.
In May this year, the Punjab Police replaced the head of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointing Mukhwinder Singh Chhina, the then IG of Patiala range, in place of Rahul S, the then Vigilance Bureau Director, citing ‘administrative grounds’.
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