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267 missing saroops: Probe team shifts record to Akal Takht secretariat
Acting jathedar of the Akal Takht Giani Harpreet Singh has said the probe will be completed within a month
Amritsar The team probing the case of 267 missing saroops of Guru Granth Sahib shifted the record of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) publishing house at Gurdwara Ramsar Sahib to Akal Takht secretariat building on Wednesday.
Acting jathedar of the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs, Giani Harpreet Singh had announced on Friday that Navita Singh, a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana high court, and Ishar Singh, a lawyer at the Telangana high court, will probe the case.
On Wednesday, advocate Ishar, along with Akal Takht jathedar’s personal assistant Jaspal Singh, Akal Takht’s head granthi (priest) Malkiat Singh and a representative of justice Navita Singh visited the publishing house and seized its record. The record was then shifted to the Akal Takht secretariat. The jathedar said, “The probe will be completed in one month.”
Fourteen saroops of Guru Granth Sahib were damaged in a fire at the SGPC publishing house at Gurdwara Ramsar Sahib in May 2016, according to the SGPC, but the Punjab Human Rights Organisation (PHRO) claimed, after five years, that the damage was far more extensive. The PHRO also claimed that this fact was hidden to save the then SAD-BJP government from public wrath as the Bargari sacrilege incident was already a burning issue and the then assembly elections were approaching.
On the basis of the statement of a retired employee of the SGPC, the PHRO said that 267 saroops went missing after the fire and a probe must be conducted to ascertain their whereabouts.
