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In Rajya Sabha, Raghav Chadha pushes for stringent punishment for sacrilege
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member of parliament, Raghav Chadha on Tuesday pushed for stringent punishment for sacrilege crimes.
DELHI Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member of parliament, Raghav Chadha on Tuesday pushed for stringent punishment for sacrilege crimes. While moving a suspension of business notice in the Rajya Sabha , under Rule 267, the AAP MP brought up the rampant increase in sacrilege incidents in Punjab, while adding that the issue was not only worrying the Punjabi community in India but also overseas.
In his letter to the chairman of the house, Chadha recalled when the Guru Granth Sahib was burnt in Bargari, and Srimad Bhagwat Geeta was desecrated in Ludhiana in 2015. He mentioned that many other incidents of disrespect of holy books were coming to the fore. “Such insult of the holy books like Guru Granth Sahib cannot be tolerated. The punishments prescribed for such crimes under sections 295 and 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are lenient. There was a need to enact a law that grants the harshest penalties to such offenders,” Chadha said.
In 2015, the incidents of sacrilege occurred between June to October following the theft of the sacred Guru Granth Sahib from a Gurudwara in Burj Jawaharsinghwala, Faridkot, and the discovery of torn pages from the Holy Book in Bargari, Faridkot.
The incidents caused widespread discontent and outrage amongst members of the Sikh community and there were demonstrations at various places across the state. During protests on October 14 in Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan, the police that arrived to remove the protesters opened fire and two people died in it.
Sacrilege cases in Punjab have been one of the major causes of intense political upheaval in the state. The then Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP government was blamed for not taking action against the sacrileges and police firing.
The incidents resulted in a major backlash against the SAD-BJP regime in the assembly elections. So far, three SITs of the Punjab Police and the CBI, which probed these three politically sensitive cases related to the desecration of Guru Granth Sahib in Bargari have failed to make any headway.
On December 14, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann met Union home minister Amit Shah and sought the Centre’s intervention in getting Presidential assent for two important pending state bills stipulating harsher punishment for perpetrators of sacrilege. Mann had told Shah that the Indian Penal Code (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2018, and The Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2018, which stipulate punishment up to life imprisonment for injury, damage, or sacrilege of holy books with the intention to hurt the religious feelings of people were waiting for Presidential assent since 2018.
Many critics of the bills have noted that strict sacrilege laws can be misused by politicians to harass the opposition at its own will and the Centre has asked the Punjab government to reconsider these bills.
