Vijay Abdallah had previously told The Hindu that the BJP had “wanted to give a ‘free hand’ to the Congress with the aid of a CBI probe” but that the party’s own “anti-investigation mindset” had made them wary.

The CBI had on Wednesday completed the preliminary inquiry into the Naroda Patiya blasts and the encounter in which Amarnath Singh was killed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday described the alleged killing of Amarnath Singh in Naroda Patiya as an “unjustified and brutal”, and said the Prime Minister would take steps to ensure that “no such incident happens in future”.

Singh, who was killed after a encounter in Naroda Patiya in December 1976, is thought to be the only survivor of 10 Sikh men and one woman who were killed in the incident.

In an interview with Scroll.in earlier this month, Manpreet Singh Badal, Punjab BJP president in 2009 and state party chief in 2014, had said the deaths of Sikhs in political violence were “not normal”.

“What we did then was an act of vengeance that only enraged our own people. That is what we should have done.”

As per the Supreme Court verdict, Mr. Singh was suspected of being a key witness in the case of the killings. He was allegedly murdered on May 27, 1976, in the presence of his wife.

In the court proceedings, Mr. Badal had said Singh’s wife, a former police officer, told the court during a preliminary inquiry into the Naroda Patiya encounter that she had a vision in which Singh was in the area and saw a group of men with a gun, who shot at him.

A BJP spokesman said the Naroda Patiya murder was not related to the encounter. “It was nothing else than a case of revenge,” he alleged.

Additional Punjab Home Minister Kiren Rijiju in his reply to the Lok Sabha said: “Not only the Naroda Patiya encounter, we have seen so many cases of killing and killing of civilians. Our party has always fought against such incidents and has always supported law and order.”

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