After being not allowed to meet Congress MLA Sukhpal Khaira in Fazilka, Leader of Opposition in the Punjab legislative Assembly Partap Singh Bajwa on Friday said that they will fight this vendetta of the AAP party legally and on the streets.

Congress workers led by Punjab party chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and Partap Singh Bajwa gathered outside the Fazilka CIA office where they were denied to meet Khaira.

“Went to meet our MLA Sukhpal Khaira in Fazilka today with the senior leadership of Punjab Congress. The police stopped us from meeting him. We will fight this vendetta of the AAP party legally and on the streets. We won’t be cowed down by such pressure tactics,” Bajwa posted on X (Formerly Twitter).

He further condemned the Punjab police and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and said that the Congress has not seen this kind of situation in Punjab.

“I want to condemn Bhawant Mann’s action. Mann thinks he will be in the government forever but he is wrong everyone has to go and his government will also go,” he said while speaking to reporters outside Sardar police station.

“As I am the Leader of the Opposition it is our constitutional right to meet Khaira. We were supposed to meet him in the custody of the police officials but they didn’t allow us. It was a courtesy call and wanted to tell him that the Congress party and each and every leader of the party is with him, nothing more than this,” he said.

He added that the Congress leaders are organizing a dharna in Bathinda against the arrest.

Meanwhile, Punjab unit chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring on Friday said that we will fight till the end.

“Vendetta politics is being done by involving him (Sukhpal Singh Khaira) in an old case. We will first meet Khaira and after meeting him we will decide what we have to do. This is being done to take revenge,” Punjab Congress chief Warring said while speaking to reporters.

Earlier on Thursday, Khaira was arrested from his residence and later was sent to a two-day police remand by Fazlika’s Jalalabad court in connection with a 2015 drugs smuggling case. Fazlika’s Jalalabad court sent Khaira to police custody till September 30.

Sukhpal Khaira was arrested in connection with an old case registered in 2015 under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

Earlier in 2015, there were two cases originated with the unearthing of a cross-border drug smuggling network in Fazilka, Punjab, leading to the seizure of heroin, gold biscuits, weapons, cartridges, and Pakistani SIM cards and the second of a fake passport racket being run in Delhi.

As the trial went on, nine smugglers, including Gurdev Singh, Manjit Singh, Harbans Singh, and Subhash Chander, were sentenced in October 2017 in connection with the Fazilka case. As per the chargesheet, Sukhpal Khaira wasclosely associated with Gurdev Singh, the leader of the Fazilka drug smuggling racket, and was accused of having sheltered him.

The primary accusations against Khaira included supporting an international gang of smugglers, having sheltered him and receiving financial benefits from drug traffickers, and enjoying the proceeds of crime.

On February 16, 2023, a Supreme Court bench of Justices BR Gavai and Vikram Nath quashed the summoning order against Khaira in the drugs case.

The arrest of Sukhpal Khaira is expected to further dent the relations of AAP and the Congress which have come together to form the INDIA alliance at the centre. The state unit of the Congress has opposed any tie-up or seatsharing arrangement with the AAP in Punjab.