Six dera men sent to 4-day police custody
SECTION 153-A (PROMOTING RELIGIOUS ENMITY) OF IPC ADDED TO THE FIR REGISTERED ON OCTOBER 12, 2015
FARIDKOT : The special investigations team (SIT) probing the 2015 sacrilege incidents on Monday day added charges of prompting religious enmity in the FIR registered in connection with the Bargari sacrilege.
The section 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc) of IPC has been added to the FIR registered on October 12, 2015, at Bajakhana police station, a day after the SIT arrested six Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda followers for sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib at Bargari village.
The SIT led by IGP, border range, Surinder Pal Singh Parmar, on Sunday arrested 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.
While seeking seven-day police remand, the SIT produced the accused before the court of judicial magistrate Faridkot Tarjani, who sent them to police custody till May 21. The SIT had told the court that 150 torn pages of a bir of Guru Granth Sahib, which was stolen from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village on June 1, 2015, were found scattered near a gurdwara at Bargari. “This act was carried out by the accused. During the investigation, it has been revealed that there were 100 more pages torn from the holy book and the accused had plan to do another sacrilege at Hari Nau village in Faridkot district in 2015. Those pages have not been recovered so far, so their custodial interrogation is required for that purpose as well,” SIT added.
Dera followers’ counsel Vinod Kumar Monga argued that the CBI has already given them clean chit in these cases but SIT has arrested them without any evidence. However, the SIT claimed that they have sufficient evidence against the accused in this case.