Amritsar Tragedy: Magisterial Probe Gives Sidhu Clean Chit

The Magesterial inquiry has given a clean chit to Sidhu and his wife while indicting the organiser.

Former BJP MP Navjot Singh Sidhu addressing the media. 

(Photo: IANS)

After being given the clean chit in the Amritsar train tragedy case, Navjot Kaur Sidhu, wife of Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu told ANI that she is not responsible for an event that she was invited to as a guest.

“If I am called to attend an event and an incident takes place there, then how am I responsible for it? These are attempts to malign the name of Sidhu family.”

Navjot Kaur Sidhu, former legislator

An inquiry into the Amritsar train accident during Dussehra has indicted Sourab Mithu Mada, son of a Congress councillor who organised the Dussehra celebrations. Along with the Congress councillor's son, the Amritsar district administration, the municipal corporation, local police and railway employees have also been indicted in the 300-page report, the Indian Express reported.

Sources said that the divisional commissioner who was appointed as the Special Executive Magistrate to look into the incident, has given a clean chit to to Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and his wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who was a chief guest at the event.

The Express reported that the report indicted Mada, saying he should have ensured safety as he was the one who had chosen the venue.

The inquiry report also said that Sidhu was not held responsible as he was not present in the city on the day. His wife too cannot be held responsible, the report said, as she was a chief guest and chief guests are not accountable for the fault of the organisers.

On 19 October, about 60 people were mowed down by a train that hurtled through a crowd that had spilled onto the railways tracks while watching the burning of a Ravana effigy on Dussehra this year.

(With inputs from The Indian Express.)