Chandigarh: Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa demands from the government to announce 10 years of imprisonment for people found guilty of committing sacrilege. On Sunday Randhawa held a meeting with the Amritsar Police commissioner in the wake of the attempted sacrilege incident at the Golden Temple.
A youth accused of attempted sacrilege at the Golden Temple was allegedly lynched by the devotees on Saturday. Sukhjinder Randhawa said the police are scanning the CCTV footage of the Golden Temple complex and are trying to identify the person involved in the sacrilege.
“We have demanded at least 10 years imprisonment for the people found guilty of sacrilege,” Randhawa said. “We will be able to investigate this case within a couple of days,” he added.
He also said that on December 19 the post mortem of the deceased will be conducted.
“The sacrilege accused was alone. The accused has not been identified so far. Security has been tightened in and around the Golden Temple complex. Installed CCTV cameras in other gurudwaras are also being examined,” Randhawa said.
Sukhjinder Randhawa also expressed concern over the growing incidents of ‘sacrilege’.
Sukhjinder Randhawa said the Punjab Assembly had passed a Bill in 2018 to stop incidents of sacrilege but it has not been cleared so far.
On Saturday police stated that a man was beaten to death by a mob after an alleged sacrilege attempt, at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. This incident has stoked tensions over a highly sensitive issue just ahead of elections in Punjab.
According to witnesses, the man jumped over the railing of the sanctum sanctorum inside the Golden Temple during the daily evening prayer and tried to grab the sword kept in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs. He was stopped and killed by those present.
TV footage of the incident – the prayers are broadcast every day – showed people rushing to stop the man.
The police confirmed the man was killed after the incident and said they were checking all CCTV cameras in their efforts to find out where he had come from, when he entered the Golden Temple and how many people were with him.
“This evening during prayers, a man jumped the fence and entered the enclosed area. The congregation was offering prayers and bowing down,” Parminder Singh Bhandal, the Deputy Commissioner of Police of Amritsar, said.
“The man, about 20 to 25 years of age who had a yellow cloth tied on his head jumped the fence… the people inside held him and escorted him out to the corridor where there was a violent altercation and he died,” he said.
“He was alone. All details will be revealed as there are a lot of CCTV cameras in the area and our teams are alert, sifting through footage. Postmortem will be done tomorrow. We will verify where he was from,” Mr. Bhandal added. News agency PTI quoted him saying that the man belonged to Uttar Pradesh.
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