Tributes paid to Beant Singh, his assassin too in Amritsar

Messages of Hawara and Pak-based Babbar Khalsa chief remembering human bomb Dilawar Singh were read out at Akal Takht.

The city on Friday witnessed tribute-paying ceremonies for both former chief minister Beant Singh and Dilawar Singh, the human bomb who assassinated him on August 31, 1995.

Punjab School Education Minister OP Soni with party leaders and workers paying homage to former Punjab CM Beant Singh on his death anniversary at Beant Singh Park in Amritsar on Friday. (Sameer Sehgal/HT)

Marking the 23rd death anniversary of the ex-CM, Congress leaders, led by education minister Om Parkash Soni, gathered at the Beant Singh Park at the Ranjit Avenue, where they garlanded his statue.

They remembered him for sacrificing his life for peace and harmony in the militancy-hit Punjab of those days.

Congress MLA (Amritsar-north) Sunil Dutti, District Congress Committee (urban) president Jugal Kishore Sharma and local leader Ashwani Kumar paid their homage to Beant Singh, who is known for reining in militancy in the state in mid-90s.

On the other hand, the bhog ceremony of akhand path was held at the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs, in the morning to observe death anniversary of Dilawar, a cop-turned-militant, who had blasted himself to kill Beant Singh outside the Punjab civil secretariat at Chandigarh in 1995. It was followed by ‘gurbani kirtan’.

However, Akal Takht jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh, who had declared the Dilawar as ‘qaumi shahid’ (martyr of the community) in 2012, skipped the ceremony.

The cop-turned militant was hailed as ‘great martyr’ of the community during the ceremony by radical Sikh leaders belonging to the Dal Khalsa, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), Damdami Taksal, All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF) and Akhand Kirtani Jatha.

On behalf of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), Jaswinder Singh Deenpur, manager of Sri Harmandar Sahib (Golden Temple) attended the ceremony. The family members of Dilwar Singh were honoured with ‘siropas’ (robes of honour) after the ceremony.

A message by Jagtar Singh Hawara, a convict in the Beant Singh assassination case who is currently serving life sentence in Tihar jail, Delhi, was read out by Gurcharan Singh Patiala. He also read the message of Pakistan-based Babbar Khalsa chief Wadhawa Singh Babbar, who had taken up the responsibility of assassination of the former CM.

Another function was organised at Gurdwara Shaheed Ganj in the Railway Colony to pay tributes to Dilawar.