Chandigarh, Sep 18 (UNI) Shiromani Akali Dal president and former Deputy CM of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal on Wednesday sought the “urgent and effective” intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure ‘expeditious and across-the-board release of all Sikh prisoners languishing in different jails in the country even after serving the full term of their sentence.’
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Badal said, 'This gesture, urgently required to ensure the implementation of the rule of law in the country, will generate tremendous good will and trust in the minds of the aggrieved sections of society. Apart from its tremendously positive psychological fall-out , the step is a constitutional obligation of the government as these prisoners are being held in ‘illegal custody’ because there is no law in the country under which a person can be kept in prison for even a minute after the expiry of his sentence. But these Sikhs have been languishing in jails for years, some of them even for decades,' said Mr Badal in his letter.