Moga incident fallout: Badal orders Orbit buses to go off the roads

Amid wide-spread protests over the molestation and death of a teenaged Dalit girl in Moga, Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday ordered Orbit buses to go off the road with immediate effect.

Moga incident fallout: Badal orders Orbit buses to go off the roads
Play

Chandigarh: Amid wide-spread protests over the molestation and death of a teenaged Dalit girl in Moga, Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday ordered Orbit buses to go off the road with immediate effect.

Badal also asked the company to send its bus operating staff on orientation course and added that no vehicles would ply until the course was completed.

"The Deputy Chief Minister, who is also the Home Minister of the state, has ordered that no bus of Orbit Aviation would ply on the road," an official spokesman said.

 He said that Sukhbir has also "asked (the) company to send bus operating staff on orientation course. "

"No Orbit bus should be on roads till completion of course," Sukhbir, who is among the owners of the company said.

 

Widespread protests rocked the state as the opposition demanded that Sukhbir Singh Badal, whose family owns the Orbit bus company in which the girls was molested, be booked in the case.

The girl was molested and pushed out of a speeding bus owned by Sukhbir Singh Badal and his family`s company, resulting in her death on Wednesday evening.

While refusing the authorities plea to conduct a post-mortem and cremate her body, the victim`s family is demanding that a case be registered against Badal and others who own the Orbit Aviation Company.

The family has also refused to accept a compensation of Rs 20 lakh being offered by the Punjab government.

The incident took place on Wednesday evening near Moga town, 180 km from here.

The victim`s mother, Shinder Kaur, was also pushed out of the moving bus. She is in a government hospital in Moga with serious injuries.

She said that they complained about the molestation to the bus driver but he mocked at them and speeded up the vehicle.

Shinder Kaur said no one helped them inside the bus and she and her daughter were pushed out of the moving bus by the molesters.

The family of three, including a 14-year-old boy, had boarded the bus in Moga for Baghapurana town, which is 20 km away, on Wednesday evening. But some people in the bus began making indecent gestures at the mother and daughter and later molested the girl.

Following the public outrage in Punjab after the girl`s death, the police arrested four people, including three staff members of the Orbit bus. They were booked for murder, attempt to murder and molestation.

Senior Congress leader and leader of opposition in the Punjab assembly, Sunil Jakhar, said that the comments of ruling Akali Dal leaders and the actions of the Punjab government showed their insensitivity towards common people.

The Congress has said that if action was not taken against the owners of the Orbit Aviation company, the party would stop the company`s buses from plying on Punjab`s roads.

Congress also demanded that a case be registered against Badal and others on the lines of the cases registered in Delhi against the owners of vehicles in which rapes had taken place in the national capital.

Aam Aadmi party activists, led by Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann, on Saturday stopped a Mercedes-Benz bus belonging to Orbit company.

Protests continued in Moga, Baghapurana and other places with people demanding that the owners of the bus company, namely Sukhbir Singh Badal and his union minister wife Harsimrat Badal, be booked for the girl`s death.

Following the protests, the Punjab police have started providing police pilot and escort vehicles to the Mercedes-Benz luxury buses being operated by Badal`s company.  

(With Agency Inputs)

Moga incident: Should an orientation course be made compulsory for public transport operating staff? in Nation on LockerDome

Zee News App: Read latest news of India and world, bollywood news, business updates, cricket scores, etc. Download the Zee news app now to keep up with daily breaking news and live news event coverage.