Capt seeks Saini’s removal on phone-tapping issue
Friday, 23/11/2012
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20121123/punjab.htm#10
Chandigarh : Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt Amarinder Singh today sought the removal of the state Director-General of Police Sumedh Singh Saini in view of his indictment by the then Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Justice TS Thakur, now a sitting Supreme Court judge, in a letter to the Chief Justice of India in 2008.
In a statement, Amarinder pointed out that in his scathing observations against Saini as the Director, Punjab Vigilance Bureau, for tapping telephones, the then Chief Justice had noted that cases involving the security of the state were not available from the record as Saini had tried to make out.
Justice Thakur had also said: “It is difficult to appreciate the immediate provocation the Vigilance Bureau had for demanding permission for phone-tapping”.
The Pradesh Congress president said Saini’s attempts to tap phones was clearly aimed at targeting and maligning Justice Mehtab Singh Gill (retred) who had referred his case to the CBI. “This was clear intimidation of the judiciary”, Amarinder observed, adding that though he had not tapped the phones of the honourable Judges, he had deliberately mentioned the names of seven sitting Judges in his reports with a malafide intent.
Amarinder said Justice Thakur had also taken exception to Saini’s handing over of CD recordings and reports to the then Punjab Advocate-General HS Mattewal, who, he had pointed out, had no locus standi in the administrative hierarchy.
The PCC president said it was clear from the contents of the letter, copies of which were released to the press, that Saini had kept everybody, including his own Director-General of Police and the Chief Secretary in the dark about the "dirty games" he was playing by getting the phones of certain persons tapped, apparently to intimidate them for reasons and motives best known to him.
Amarinder said that Saini had become a law unto himself and he had no moral right to continue as the Director-General of the Punjab Police.
