Suicide bomber’s portrait at Golden Temple museum
A religious function will be organised at the museum on June 14 to unveil Dilawar Singh’s portrait in the presence of Sikh clergymen and SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami.
SULAKHAN SINGH BHANGALI, manager, Golden Temple
AMRITSAR: The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) will install the portrait of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh’s assassin Dilawar Singh in the Central Sikh Museum on the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar on Tuesday.
Dilawar Singh was a serving Punjab Police officer when he joined the terror organisation Babbar Khalsa International and became a suicide bomber to assassinate the Punjab CM on August 31, 1995. The bomb blast at the secretariat complex in Chandigarh had claimed 16 other lives too.
“A religious function will be organised at the museum on June 14 to unveil Dilawar Singh’s portrait in the presence of Sikh clergymen and SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami. The portrait of Giani Bhagwan Singh, who was the head granthi of Akal Takht during the Operation Bluestar in June 1984, will also be unveiled. Family members of both of them have been invited to the event,” said Golden Temple manager Sulakhan Singh Bhangali.
Portraits of many Sikh militants are already on display at the museum. They include militant leaders Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala, Amrik Singh and General Shabeg Singh, who were killed in the Operation Bluestar, and Sukhdev Singh Sukha and Harjinder Singh Jinda, who assassinated General AS Vaidya to avenge the military action at the Golden Temple.
Displaying Dilawar’s portrait at the museum was a longpending demand of radical Sikh groups, and even highest Sikh temporal seat Akal Takht, which observes his death anniversary every year, declared him a “Qaumi Shaheed” (national martyr) in 2012 after a massive unrest in Punjab against the scheduled execution of Balwant Singh Rajoana, one of the convicts in Beant Singh’s assassination case.
However, the apex gurdwara body SGPC had not yielded so far. The latest move is being seen in line with a radical shift in the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which controls the SGPC, after it fielded Rajoana’s foster sister Kamaldeep Kaur in the Sangrur Lok Sabha bypoll slated on June 23. The Panthic party is seeking votes in support of an immediate release of Sikh prisoners, including Rajoana and Jagtar Singh Hawara, another convict in Beant Singh assassination case .