I was Maur blast target: Jassi

Perneet Singh

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, February 16

Congress leader and PPCC general secretary Harminder Singh Jassi today said he was the target of the Maur blast, a week after the police hinted that the attack was linked to Dera Sacha Sauda.

Jassi’s daughter is married to the son of dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.

Addressing mediapersons here today, Jassi said, “The blast was triggered in a car parked close to my vehicle outside the rally venue. I had just got into it and my office manager Harpal Singh was headed towards another vehicle after briefing me about the next stop. Harpal was among the seven persons killed in the blast while my gunman lost a leg.” The Congress leader has come out in the open over the issue within a week of the dera link being unearthed in the Maur blast.

Last week, the police had booked Gurtej Singh Kala, incharge of a workshop at Dera Sacha Sauda, and Amrik Singh, a former security guard of the dera chief.

Jassi didn’t defend the dera over the issue. He also sought a probe into the role of his nephew and former aide Bhupinder Singh Gora, whom he claimed reached the site in a government vehicle within a couple of minutes of the blast at Maur on January 31, 2017. He also claimed that Gora’s gunman was already there.

Rejecting Gora’s allegations regarding his link with the blast, Jassi said had the Dera Sacha Sauda been sympathetic to him, its political wing would not have announced its support for SAD at Jeet Palace in Bathinda on February 1, 2017, a day after the Maur blast.

“Moreover, the dera neither supported me in 2012 Assembly elections nor in the 2014 bypoll when I contested from Talwandi Sabo Assembly constituency,” he added.

On whether the then SAD-BJP regime put the police probe into the blast on the backburner, he said the then government was accountable for whatever happened at that time. “Had they been sincere, the probe would have been completed in 15 days,” he said. He, however, said he was satisfied with the probe being conducted by the police now.