CHANDIGARH: Amid a complete political silence in Punjab over the lynchings incidents in Amritsar and Kapurthala over the alleged attempts of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib, Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Monday urged the authorities to take strict action against all those who took the law into their hands, inviting flak from Akal Takht Jathedar (highest temporal seats of Sikhs) Harpreet Singh.
“Sacrilege is horrendous but lynching in a civilised country is no less horrendous. I request the authorities to take strict action against all who took the law into their hands,” the Congress MP tweeted. Reacting to his comment, Singh wrote a Facebook post justifying the lynchings saying that “when the rule of law fails in providing justice by punishing those who committed sacrilege, what should Sikhs do?” The heirs of Sikhs have left the world waiting for justice for the genocide of 1984…,” he wrote.
There has been widespread condemnation of the two sacrilege attempts in Punjab but politicians have been silence on the lynching of the alleged accused, with some quarters even justifying the mob justice. Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu called for hanging the accused in the sacrilege cases in public. He also visited the families of the 2015 Behbal Kalan police firing victims, who are staging a hunger strike to press for justice for their deceased family members.
Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal said the state’s Congress government still wanted to play politics on the sensitive issue instead of bringing the perpetrators to book and this was why it had had not ordered a judicial inquiry into the recent incidents of sacrilege at Golden Temple. Former chief minister Amarinder Singh urged the government to get to the bottom of what led the accused to act in such a manner.