tab Akshay Kumar (2)
Indian Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar speaks during an event to wish good luck to Indian athletes for the 2018 Asian Games, in Mumbai on July 28, 2018. The Jakarta Palembang 2018, is a pan-Asian multi-sport event scheduled to be held from 18 August to 2 September 2018 in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta and Palembang. / AFP / Sujit Jaiswal Image Credit: AFP

Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar on Wednesday appeared before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Punjab Police, which is looking into the 2015 police firing incidents at Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura following cases of sacrilege in Faridkot.

Soon after his arrival at Chandigarh airport, the actor headed straight to the Punjab Police headquarters. Kumar refused to talk to reporters at the airport.

The SIT wants to question Kumar as his name was mentioned in the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission report on sacrilege incidents. The SIT had earlier asked him to appear before it on November 21 at the Amritsar circuit house. However, police later allowed the actor to appear before the SIT at Chandigarh.

The Justice Ranjit Singh commission report, which was tabled in the Punjab Assembly in August, had given a reference of a letter written (October 9, 2017) to it by former MLA Harbans Jalal claiming that a meeting took place between religious group Dera Sacha Sauda’s chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal at the actor’s flat in Mumbai in 2015 in connection with the release of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s movie MSG.

The meeting was allegedly held before the Dera chief was pardoned in a blasphemy case. MSG was not released in Punjab in September 2015 because of an edict by the Akal Takht, the supreme temporal seat of the Sikhs, against it.

Kumar has denied arranging any meeting between former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and the Dera Sacha Sauda sect head.

The actor has also denied having ever met the Dera head, who is currently serving a 20-year jail term in a rape case.

Kumar had issued the denial on November 12 after the SIT summoned him along with former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal.

“It has come to my knowledge that some rumours and false statements are being loosely made on social media about my involvement with a person named Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in the context of a fictitious meeting involving Sukhbir Singh Badal,” Kumar had said in tweet.

“With all humility, I would like to state the following facts. I have never ever met Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in my life, anywhere. I learnt from social media at some point that Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh resided for a while at some place in my locality Juhu in Mumbai but we never crossed each other’s paths,” Kumar had said.