Man killed for ‘sacrilege’ attempt in Golden Temple
PUNJAB CHIEF MINISTER ORDERS PROBE TO FIND ‘REAL CONSPIRATORS’
A MAN was beaten to death in India for allegedly trying to commit an act of sacrilege at the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh faith.
Local media reported that the unidentified man jumped over a railing into the temple’s inner sanctum during last Saturday’s (18) evening prayers in the northern city of Amritsar.
Broadcaster NDTV said the man tried to grab a sword kept in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book, when he was stopped by worshippers and later beaten to death.
Punjab state chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi condemned the man’s “most unfortunate and heinous act” in a series of tweets from his office late last Saturday. Channi visited the shrine last Sunday (19) and also ordered a probe to find out the “underlying motive and real conspirators behind the dastardly act.”
A day after the incident, another unidentified man was beaten to death by a mob after being accused of “disrespecting” the Sikh religious flag at a gurdwara in Nizampur village last Sunday (19) morning.
Villagers and members of Sikh organisations clashed with the police personnel who tried to save the man; at least three policemen, including a station house officer, were injured in the clashes.
Police said there was “no visible sign” of sacrilege incident having taken place at the gurdwara, on the Kapurthala-Subhnapur road in Punjab.
Defence of the Guru Granth Sahib and Sikh shrines against desecration is a sensitive issue for the community.
Former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 after she ordered a brutal army assault on the Golden
Temple to flush out separatists.
Her killing sparked a bloody pogrom in the capital New Delhi which left nearly 3,000 Sikhs dead.
In 2015, a controversial biopic of Sikhism’s founder Guru Nanak was pulled after protests prompted by his depiction in human form, which against the tenets of the religion.
And a group of Nihang – a warrior order within the Sikh faith – tortured and killed a man on the outskirts of New Delhi in October after accusing him of desecrating the holy book.