Amid outrage, Oppn guns for Badal family

The death of a teenager girl, who was supposedly molested and pushed off a moving bus — part of the Orbit Bus Transport, largely owned by the ruling Badals — near Moga on Wednesday turned into a political firestorm Thursday with the Opposition demanding resignation of Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal and cancellation of the bus permit.

The Moga police on Thursday arrested the driver and conductor and registered cases of murder, criminal attack on woman and scheme besides charges under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act at the Baghapurana police station. The faulty are being interrogated, said Inspector Prem Singh.

The outrage triggered a thunderstorm of charges from the Congress, with Partap Singh Bajwa saying the incident “demonstrated the lawlessness and anarchy that is common in Punjab.” The Badal family members are the most shareholders in Orbit Transport and hence owed an clarification.

He said, “The transit association has given favored hospitalization.”

The incident echoed in the Lok Sabha too. Congress MP Ravneet Bittu called for a boycott on Orbit on the lines of the one imposed on Uber Taxi Services following sexual assault on a girl by an Uber taxi driver. In the noon, Bittu and Satokh Choudhry and AAP members Bhagwant Mann and Dharamvira Gandhi stormed the well of the House demanding time to raise the issue.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal described it a disgraceful incident. “We criticize it. Unluckily, it is our bus,” he said. “I will discuss with Sukhbir and we will see to it that no such things happen again,” he added.