Derogatory posters at Bargari: SIT collects handwriting sample of dera follower

The SIT led by inspector general of police Surinder Pal Singh Parmar arrested four dera followers saying the posters were pasted by them on the directions of dera’s three national committee members

Faridkot

Derogatory posters at Bargari: SIT collects handwriting sample of dera follower

The special investigation team (SIT) probing the 2015 sacrilege incidents has again collected handwriting sample of a dera Sacha Sauda follower to match it with the writing on derogatory posters that were pasted at Bargari village in 2015.

Sukhjinder Singh, alias Sunny, who is in two-day police custody, was presented before a court with a request to collect his handwriting samples claiming that one of the derogatory posters was written by him. The court of judicial magistrate Tarjini on Tuesday allowed SIT’s application and samples were collected by the probe team. The SIT said the sample will be sent to the Forensic Science Lab (FSL).

The SIT led by inspector general of police Surinder Pal Singh Parmar arrested four dera followers saying the posters were pasted by them on the directions of dera’s three national committee members.

In the three posters that appeared at Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala villages on September 24-25, 2015, it was threatened that the “bir” (copy) of Guru Granth Sahib stolen from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on June 1 that year would be torn if the Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim-starrer film Messenger of God (MSG)-2 was not allowed to be released in Punjab.

The SIT, then led then deputy inspector general (DIG) Ranbir Singh Khatra in 2018, claimed that the handwriting of the accused dera followers has matched with the one on the posters. But the CBI in its closure report filed in a Mohali court in July 2019 said the handwriting samples of the accused dera followers it had sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in Delhi did not match with the ones on the posters.

With two contrary claims on the record of two investigation teams, the Parmar-led SIT is again going for the forensic analysis of the handwriting of the same accused. The SIT is following the Khatra-led SIT’s lead in the investigation.

According to the Khatra-led SIT probe findings, the dera followers in September planned to paste posters to throw a challenge to the Sikh community three months after the theft of the bir from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village. The Khatra-led SIT had further claimed about the involvement of dera followers Mohinder Pal Singh Bittu, who was killed in the Nabha jail, Sukhjinder and Ranjeet Singh in putting up these posters at Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala.

“The dera followers were also upset with the government for not releasing MSG-2 in Punjab. To execute their plan, they procured A-4 paper along with Reynolds black marker pen from a shop at Bargari of Gopal Das, a member of a dera committee. Shakti Singh bought these papers and Bittu decided what will be written on the posters,” the SIT had claimed, adding that Sukhjinder wrote on the posters at a Kotkapura namcharcha ghar (dera prayer centre) and Bittu handed them over on September 24 to Baljeet Singh, who along with Shakti pasted it at Bargari. The same night, Sukhjinder and Ranjit pasted two posters at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala, the SIT had claimed.