6 DERA FOLLOWERS ARRESTED FOR 2015 BARGARI SACRILEGE
The SIT probe found that the accused scattered torn pages of a ‘bir’, stolen from the Burj Jawahar Singh Wala gurdwara, at Bargari
FARIDKOT: The Punjab Police SIT, led by inspector general of police (IGP), border range, Surinder Pal Singh Parmar, on Sunday arrested six Dera Sacha Sauda followers in connection with sacrilege incident at Bargari village in Faridkot district that had sparked statewide protests in 2015. The SIT probe found that the accused scattered torn pages of a ‘bir’, stolen from the Burj Jawahar Singh Wala gurdwara, at Bargari.
FARIDKOT: The Punjab Police special investigation team (SIT), led by inspector general of police (IGP), border range, Surinder Pal Singh Parmar, on Sunday arrested six Dera Sacha Sauda followers in connection with sacrilege incident at Bargari village in Faridkot district that had sparked statewide protests in 2015.
Confirming the arrests, an SIT official, not wanting to be named, said the accused were identified as Sukhjinder Singh, alias Sunny, Nishan Singh, Ranjit Singh, alias Bhola, and Pardeep Kumar, all resident of Kotkapura, Shakti Singh of Daggu Romana village and Baljit Singh of Sikhanwala village.
Sukhjinder, Shakti, Ranjit and Baljeet were also arrested in another sacrilege case in which two derogatory posters were pasted near the Bargari gurdwara on the intervening night of September 24-25, 2015. Both cases were registered at the Bajakhana police station.
The SIT probe has found that the accused had scattered the torn pages of a “bir” (copy of Guru Granth Sahib), which was stolen from the Burj Jawahar Singh Wala gurdwara on October 12, 2015, at Bargari. The derogatory posters were also pasted by them near the Bargari gurdwara, claimed the SIT.
The accused will be produced in the Faridkot court on Monday for securing their police remand, said the SIT official.
In 2018, the Khatra-led SIT had arrested more than 20 followers of the Sirsa-based dera, including Mohinder Pal Bittu, who was killed in the Nabha jail in 2019, in connection with two other sacrilege incidents and rioting in Punjab in 2015. The SIT claims the dera followers had confessed to the crime.
The Akali-BJP government,
led by Parkash Singh Badal, had handed over the probe into the three sacrilege incidents to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The first case pertained to the theft of the bir (copy of Guru Granth Sahib) from Burj Jawahar
Singh Wala village near Kotkapura in Faridkot district on June 1, 2015.
The second was the putting up of derogatory posters at Bargari village on September 25, 2015; and the third was the sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib as torn pages of the bir were found scattered in front of a gurdwara at Bargari on October 12, 2015. In July 2019, the CBI had filed a closure report in three sacrilege cases.
The Congress government, led by Captain Amarinder Singh, however, took back the cases from the CBI and handed over the probe to the SIT led by Khatra. In July last year, the SIT named jailed Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, national committee members of dera --Sandeep Bretta, Pardeep Kler and Harsh Dhuri --- as accused and filed a chargesheet against seven dera followers in a case relating to the theft of the “bir”.
In January this year, Punjab and Haryana high court asked the state government to replace the head of the SIT probing 2015 sacrilege cases, after which IG Parmar was appointed as the new chief.
The HC had also directed CBI to handover all the case files and asked SIT to file a supplementary chargesheet after taking into account of the evidence filed by CBI.