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Man beaten to death on suspicion of sacrilege at Gurdaspur gurdwara
Posted with the General Reserve Engineer Force in Arunachal Pradesh, the victim had stopped at the gurdwara on outskirts of Gurdaspur while on his way to his home in Pathankot
A gurdwara managing committee head is among two people booked for murder after a General Reserve Engineer Force personnel was beaten to death on the suspicion of sacrilege at the shrine situated on the outskirts of Gurdaspur.
The victim, identified as Deepak, belonged to Larhi Sharmo village in Pathankot and was posted in Arunachal Pradesh. He had reportedly returned by air and was on his way home from Amritsar, when by mistake he got off the bus at Gurdaspur instead of Pathankot on Thursday night.
Seeing the gurdwara, situated on the Tibri road, he had entered it to take rest. It was then that he was brutally beaten up by some locals on the suspicion that he was there to commit sacrilege, said police on the basis of initial probe.
Gurjit Singh Saini, who is the chief of the gurdwara managing committee, has been named as the prime accused in the FIR registered in the case, besides Daljit Singh, a local. Both are on the run.
“No sacrilege was committed. It’s possible the people who thrashed him mistook him for someone else who was there to commit it. We can attain clarity only after arresting and questioning the prime accused,” said Nanak Singh, senior superintendent of police, Gurdaspur.
Semeer Singh, the area station house officer, said that as per the locals, Deepak was drunk when he entered the gurdwara premises. “The postmortem report is awaited to verify it. We are also trying to procure CCTV footage of the incident,” he said.
The Gurdaspur police had initially registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, but it was converted to that of murder on Saturday, on demands made by the victim’s family.
Meanwhile, local Sikh bodies are backing Daljit and terming him innocent. “As far as Daljit is concerned, he was present on the spot when police reached there and the grieving family named him in the complaint,” said the SSP, while also denying allegations of detaining and harassing his mother.
Also dispelling the rumours of custodial death, the SHO said police had rushed Deepak to hospital in a critical condition, and he later succumbed to his injuries.
