Another sacrilege case has come to the fore in Punjab, when a man was lynched to death at the Darbar Sahib – the Golden Temple. A man from Uttar Pradesh jumped the golden grille inside the sanctum sanctorum, picked up the sword and reached near the spot where a Sikh priest was reciting the holy Guru Granth Sahib. The man was caught by members of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) task force after an angry mob thrashed him badly, leading to his death.
Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi condemned the incident and directed the state police officials to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter. “The CM also called up the SGPC president and assured his government’s full support and cooperation to get to the bottom of the matter,” the CMO said in a statement.
The Akali Dal’s Parkash Singh Badal and the five-time chief minister said the “heinous attempt to sabotage Sachkhand Sri Harmandar Sahib” was “deeply shocking and extremely painful”. Badal’s son and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal expressed “shocked and disbelieved at the most heinous outrage of the attempt to desecrate our highest and holy shrine Sachkhand Sri Harmandar Sahib”, in a written statement.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is campaigning in Punjab, has demanded the harshest punishment to the criminals. He said in a tweet, ‘People are in shock. It could be a big conspiracy. The culprits should be given the harshest punishment.”
The issue assumes significance ahead of the elections because six years ago, incidents of sacrilege and subsequent police firing at Behbal Kalan in Faridkot district, where two anti-sabotage protesters were killed in 2015, cost the SAD-BJP alliance in the 2017 elections. .
Past incidents of sacrilege in Punjab
On June 1, 2015, a copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holiest scripture of the Sikhs, was stolen from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village in Faridkot district. In its report, the Justice Ranjit Singh (Retd) Commission of Inquiry set up by the Congress government described the theft as an “event of an unprecedented nature”. The report said the theft from an “unattended gurdwara” was “unimaginable, unimaginable and unexpected”.
In another incident, on September 25, 2015, two derogatory posters targeting Sikhs and some Sikh preachers were found at a mausoleum near the same Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village.
On October 12, torn pages of Guru Granth Sahib were found in Bargari village of Faridkot district. The incident sparked widespread discontent and outrage among members of the Sikh community, leading to massive protests and agitations.
In the protests that followed, on October 14, two Sikhs were killed in police firing in Behbal Kalan village, while in Kotkapura, a man was shot and several others injured in a lathi-charge by the police. Former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal was held responsible for the sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and the subsequent firing at Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan in the Justice (retd) Ranjit Singh Commission report.
This year, on October 15, a thirty-five-year-old Dalit man named Lakhbir Singh was lynched, his hand was chopped off and his body was mutilated at a farmer protest site in Kundli. His body was found with more than 10 wounds. Sharp weapons, tied to barricades. In a video clip shared on social media, some Nihangs were seen standing near the injured man’s head with his severed left hand. In the clip, Nihangs can be heard saying that the man has been punished for “insulting” a holy book of the Sikhs.
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