Ludhiana MLA booked in a series of criminal cases faces a spate of new FIRs amid pandemic

In August and September, the Punjab Police registered at least three first-information reports against Simarjeet Singh Bains, a member of the state’s legislative assembly. Simarjeet represents Ludhiana’s Atam Nagar constituency in the assembly and is a founder of the Lok Insaaf Party. Two FIRs alleged that Simarjeet had held protests during which LIP members violated restrictions imposed by the government to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic. According to the police, one of the protests resulted in the assault of four police personnel. The third FIR, filed in Ludhiana, accused Simarjeet of encouraging the public to flout COVID-19 restrictions. Ludhiana had a total of 16,599 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus till 22 September—the highest of all districts in Punjab.

The MLA was booked under several sections of the Indian Penal Code in the three FIRs, including Sections 188, 269 and 505 which deal with disobedience of a civil servant’s order, negligence likely to spread infection of a disease which is dangerous to life and statements conducing to public mischief, respectively. 

The FIRs are hardly an anomaly in Simarjeet’s political career. In the affidavits he submitted to declare his candidacy in the 2012 and 2017 Punjab assembly elections, Simarjeet had mentioned that six cases were pending against him. According to the affidavit he submitted for the 2019 Lok Sabha election, eight criminal cases were pending against him, which booked him under 23 sections of the IPC, including those dealing with theft, dacoity, house-trespassing and rioting. A few charges featured in multiple FIRs—for instance, the MLA was booked twice for attempt to murder; thrice for criminal intimidation; and four times for assault or use of criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of his duty. Simarjeet claimed in the affidavit that all six cases were “false.” 

For over a decade now, Simarjeet has faced several allegations of taking the law into his own hands. On multiple occasions, he characterised his alleged misdemeanours as a hands-on approach against corruption. Yet, despite the many accusations against him, Simarjeet has been elected as an MLA twice.

The most well-known charge against Simarjeet is from more than a decade earlier when he was a member of the Shiromani Akali Dal, which ruled the state between 2007 and 2017. A civil servant, reportedly the whistle-blower of a corruption scandal during the SAD’s tenure, had accused Simarjeet—who pitches himself as an anti-corruption leader—of assault. 

In May 2009, The Tribune reported that “seven persons allegedly sold fake stamp papers worth crores causing loss to the state exchequer. The scam came to light when Sub-Registrar (central) Major Gurinder Singh Benipal found that the stamp paper of Rs 45,000 denomination submitted to him by a private party was only a coloured xerox.” The newspaper reported that of seven suspects in the case, two are a “father-son duo, who also happen to be Akali leaders.” 

Next month, Simarjeet, his fellow SAD member Kamaljit Singh Karwal—who is now in the Congress party—and their supporters reportedly assaulted Benipal, a tehsildar and a retired officer in the Indian Army. A report in the Hindustan Times noted, “Besides assaulting him with knives, iron rods and hockey sticks and tearing his clothes, the accused had also snatched his licensed revolver before fleeing.” 

Benipal, now a 55-year-old district revenue officer at Mohali, believed that he was attacked for exposing the fake stamp-paper scam during the SAD regime. He sounded agitated about the incident even when I spoke to him in September 2020. “I still remember the insult and the near-death experience,” he said. “Bains’s accomplices did not even allow senior police officials, including the then SSP and the deputy commissioner, to rush me to a hospital.” 

Simarjeet has been booked under multiple sections of the IPC regarding the incident, including those which pertain to attempt to murder; rioting, armed with a deadly weapon; and criminal conspiracy. This year, Simarjeet claimed during a conversation with me that the Central Bureau of Investigation gave him a clean chit in the case. He said he would share a copy of the CBI report, but had not at the time of publication. The matter is currently pending in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

This did not seem to harm Simarjeet’s electoral future. His elder brother Balwinder Bains—also an MLA in Ludhiana currently—was earlier a member of the SAD as well. The Bains brothers told the Indian Express quit the party in 2011. The report mentioned that Simarjeet claimed that he tried to “unearth the corrupt deeds of some officials or even our dear ministers,” but was silenced. He added that he was “a great follower of social activist Anna Hazare.” 

Next year, Simarjeet and Balwinder contested from the Atam Nagar and Ludhiana South constituencies, respectively, as independent candidates in the state elections. The constituencies had been carved in a delimitation exercise that took place in 2008 and were going to polls for the first time. The brothers won, and wield influence in these constituencies even now.

By the end of 2016, the Bains brothers formed the Lok Insaaf Party and allied with the Aam Aadmi Party, which was built on the backs of an anti-corruption movement. The brothers were re-elected in the February 2017 state elections. I asked Harpal Singh Cheema, an AAP MLA, why the party had allied with a politician facing multiple criminal charges. He claimed that the AAP earlier thought that the Simarjeet’s party was against corruption but “when we got acquainted with their reality, we maintained distance.” Simarjeet had disclosed that six criminal cases were pending against him in his election affidavit. Within two months after the polls, the alliance fell apart. 

Simarjeet was embroiled in more controversies even after his re-election. In 2018, Yashpal, an assistant passport officer, wrote in his complaint to the police that Simarjeet, his gunmen and 10–15 supporters entered a Passport Seva Kendra in Ludhiana without an appointment, on 24 April. He alleged that Simarjeet and his party members tried to record videos—which was prohibited—and manhandled a security guard. They were subsequently booked under sections of the IPC which pertain to house-trespass in order to commit an offence punishable with imprisonment, obstructing a public servant in the discharge of public functions, assaulting or using criminal force to deter a public servant from duty and criminal intimidation.

An Indian Express report quoted a response from Simarjeet regarding the allegations the next day. “I had gone to the passport office to expose unauthorised agents sitting outside and looting applicants,” he claimed while insisting that he was in the right. “I never stopped when the Badals, during the SAD-BJP rule, got 13 FIRs registered against me. I will not stop now when the Congress is doing same thing.” 

Around the same time, the Regional Passport Office at Chandigarh issued a show-cause notice against Bains for hiding criminal cases pending against him while applying for a Tatkaal Passport. In September 2018, a Ludhiana court barred Simarjeet from entering passport offices without prior permission of the concerned officials. 

A year later, Simarjeet was again in the news for using aggressive language with Vipul Ujwal, the deputy commissioner of Gurdaspur district. On 4 September 2019, more than twenty people had died in a blast in a firecracker unit in Gurdaspur’s Batala city. According to news reports and a video that circulated online, Simarjeet had approached Ujwal regarding an issue concerning a family being unable to identify the dead body of their kin. The video showed that an argument ensued, and Simarjeet began shouting at Ujwal. “This is not your father’s office!” Simarjeet said. He was reportedly booked under several sections of the IPC including one which dealt with obstructing a civil servant in the discharge of duties. 

In August and September 2020, he was booked for disregarding guidelines to contain the novel coronavirus thrice. Just months before these FIRs, Simarjeet sounded an alarm about the pandemic. “The pandemic has changed the world in many ways,” he said in a conversation with The Tribune, in April. “It has come up as a challenge for the mankind. This is not the right time to play politics. Instead, we need to handle the situation deftly. The decision to impose the lockdown was a timely move by the government as the health sector here in India is not in a position to tackle the issue in case of emergency.”

On 11 August 2020, LIP members staged a protest outside the residence of Ravneet Singh Bittu—a Congress member who represents the Ludhiana constituency in the Lok Sabha—regarding a shortage of ventilators at a civil hospital. (Bittu had defeated Simarjeet in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.) Members of both the parties had a scuffle. While Simarjeet said Congress members had attacked members of his party, Bittu claimed that a LIP member began the violence. On 11 August, the Bains brothers, along with other LIP members, protested outside the office of Rakesh Agarwal, Ludhiana’s police commissioner, demanding that the police book Congress members under appropriate sections of the IPC.
 
The Ludhiana police reportedly filed an FIR against the Congress and booked LIP members in a separate case for holding the protest and violating COVID-19 guidelines. Members of the LIP were booked under sections of the IPCand the Disaster Management Act. Jatinder Chopra, an assistant commissioner of police in Ludhiana, said that police officials at the station had contracted the virus after the protest. Chopra told me that the police served a notice to Simarjeet asking him to take a COVID-19 test.

Simarjeet refused to comply. “While we do not have any issue with getting tested, Punjab Police is meant to maintain law and order and not medical and health services,” Simarjeet wrote in a reply to the notice. “The police cannot send a notice regarding health services.” He alleged that the police is exceeding its jurisdiction to please their political “prabhus,” or gods. Later, he told me, “I tore off his notice. I would get the test done if I get a notice from the civil surgeon or the SMO”—senior medical officer. 

The response suggested that Simarjeet would abide by the health department’s guidelines. But according to a press release by the police in subsequent days, Rajesh Bagga, the civil surgeon of Ludhiana, filed a complaint against Simarjeet for “misguiding people through a video clip regarding COVID-19.” The police registered an FIR on 6 September based on the complaint. 

Bagga mentioned in the complaint that Simarjeet was seen inciting people to not wear masks in the video. “Corona’s size is so small that it can reach you through a mask also,” Simarjeet had said, before adding that he did not wear a mask in the state legislative assembly. “The speaker asked me why was I not wearing a mask. I told him, ‘I know I am healthy, I know my fitness level,’” he said. “Speaker sahib, you are not a doctor.’” 

Simarjit insinuated that governments all over the world have been using the coronavirus crisis for electoral gains. “Not only Captain Amarinder Singh or Modi, all over the world—even Trump, America—ruling prime ministers and chief ministers are raising alarm and trying to form new governments.” He compared ruling governments to “madaris”—artists who perform on streets with monkeys. “It’s how a madari directs a jamura”—a monkey. “They are making the public a jamura with all this—lockdown, curfew, odd even.” To justify his claims, Simarjeet suggested the state and central governments’ failed to give the required support to the public during the pandemic. “The government has not helped people with a single rupee for six months,” Simarjeet said. 

“Take steam twice a day and have kadha”—or decoction—“instead of tea, corona tuhade nede nahin khadna”—the virus will come nowhere near you—Simarjeet said. “Save yourself from the isolation centres. Save yourself from the quarantine centres and hospitals,” he said. Later, during a conversation on 8 September, he told me that his recommendations are available on the “Ayurvedic Department’s website” as well. Indeed, the ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy has recommended measures such as having kadha and steam inhalation for “boosting immunity” on its website. But the Narendra Modi led government’s response to the virus has been indisputably marked by bad science. 

The press release by the Punjab Police regarding the 6 September FIR mentioned that according to Bagga, the video was circulated on various social media platforms “leading to the creation of an atmosphere of confusion among the public, regarding Covid-19.” It stated that the police had sought the legal opinion of the district attorney of Ludhiana, who concluded that Simarjeet was “wilfully endangering the health and safety” of Punjab’s residents by “exhorting and provoking” them to violate directions, norms and guidelines imposed to contain the novel coronavirus. 

The MLA was booked under a section of the Disaster Management Act which details the punishment for circulating a false warning or alarm about a disaster; disobeying regulations invoked under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897; and sections of the IPC which pertain to disobeying a public servant’s order and statements conducing to public mischief. 

Simarjeet did not relent. A day later, the Bains brothers and members of the LIP held a protest at Patiala’s Polo ground. The demonstration was held to demand the dismissal of Sadhu Singh Dharamsot—the state’s minister for social justice, empowerment and minorities—who is facing an accusation of being involved in a multi-crore scam related to a post-matric scholarship given to students from the Scheduled Caste category. 

According to a statement by the police, the LIP did not take requisite permission for holding the protest and provoked an “illegal gathering” of around fifteen hundred people. “The district and police administration made repeated appeals … but they did not pay any heed,” the police’s statement mentioned. 

The police said that the protesters “behaved irresponsibly, got violent” and attacked police officials on duty. According to the statement, a sub-inspector and four police officials—including two woman constables—suffered injuries and had to be hospitalised. It also alleged that the protesters “misbehaved with lady police force.” In the 9 September FIR, the Bains brothers and 319 members of the LIP were booked under nine sections of the IPC. They were also charged with the Disaster Management Act and the Epidemic Disease (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020—according to the police, the protesters did not follow administrations guidelines regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

I spoke to Simarjeet twice in September. “COVID-19 is there, the viral is there. But the ruling parties have politicised, exaggerated things for its own benefits,” he said. He insinuated that Congress members also violate COVID-19 guidelines, but do not face any legal action. 

On 8 September, when I mentioned that all guidelines say that people should avoid gathering in crowds, he replied, “Medical nexus all over the world, the hospitals that are more expensive than seven-star hotels, power organisations like the WHO—they are fooling the public.” He reiterated the statements he had made in the video. “People will think I am saying something bitter or weird after today. But they will come—you wait for four­­–six months, let the medicine, vaccine come,” he said. “People will say I was right.” 

He told me, on 22 September, that five more FIRs were registered against him for holding cycle rally to protest three bills related to the farm sector that were passed in the Lok Sabha this month. I asked Simarjeet about the several allegations he has faced in his political career. “If you write from this angle, it will not be fair,” he said. He termed these as “political vendetta, false FIRs.” He added, “I have never even raised my voice with an officer.” He said he was following up on the inquiries into the allegations and that he believed that he will get justice.