5 months on, CBI ‘re-opens’ probe into sacrilege cases

Balwant Garg
Tribune News Service 
Faridkot, December 3

About five month after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed a closure report in the politically and religiously sensitive issue of three sacrilege incidents, a six-member team of the agency on Tuesday reached Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village of Faridkot and recorded statements of six persons.

The CBI team members met Gora Singh, the granthi of the gurdwara at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala, cashier Pritam Kaur, one Ranjit Singh and three other villagers on Tuesday.

Gora Singh said the CBI repeated all those questions which were asked by different investigating agencies and judicial commissions in the past four years.

Sources in the police revealed that the CBI has re-opened the  investigation into the sacrilege incidents which had rocked the state in October 2015.  

These incidents had started from a gurdwara at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village on June 1, 2015, when a ‘bir’ of  Guru Granth Sahib was stolen. It was followed by putting up of objectionable posters in Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on September 25, 2015, and the recovery of torn pages of the stolen ‘bir’ from near a gurdwara in Bargari on October 12, 2015.

On October 26, 2015, the then ruling SAD-BJP government had handed over the investigation in the three cases to the CBI.

While an SIT of the Punjab Police had nominated three followers of Dera Sacha Sauda: Mohinder Pal Bittu (who was killed in Nabha Jail on June 22 this year), Sukhjinder Singh and Shakti Singh, the filing of the closure report by the CBI  in this case had led to a lot of political uproar.

The CBI was under attack for continuing its investigation in these cases even after  the   Punjab Assembly had passed a resolution to call back the investigation of these cases from the CBI on August 28, 2018.

In this political and religious upheaval over the sacrilege incidents and the filing of the closure report by the CBI, in August this year, the agency had taken a U-turn and approached the CBI Special Court in Mohali, saying it wanted to carry on the probe in these three cases.

Cases of 2015 

The incidents had started from a gurdwara at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village on June 1, 2015, when a ‘bir’ of  Guru Granth Sahib was stolen. It was followed by putting up of objectionable posters in Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on September 25, 2015, and the recovery of torn pages of the stolen ‘bir’ from near a gurdwara in Bargari on October 12, 2015