Key Points
Bakshish, who, Lakhvinder said, had been battling a mental illness for four years, had wandered into a gurdwara in the neighbouring Bandala village and torn a page of the Guru Granth Sahib, considered to be a living Guru by the Sikhs..
We are still verifying his role in the murder, Station House Officer (SHO), Arifke, Balraj Singh, told ThePrint Monday.. According to Lakhvinder, since filing the complaint, a senior figure from the gurdwara and some local religious leaders have visited his home, urging him to retract his complaint and reach a settlement with the gurdwara..
Meanwhile, on a complaint from the gurdwara and based on CCTV footage showing Bakshish tearing a page from the Guru Granth Sahib, police registered a case posthumously under Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 295A (sacrilege) against him on 4 May...
On the part of authorities, while the Akal Takth highest seat of authority of the Sikhs ordered social ostracisation of Lakhvinders family, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Harjinder Singh Dhami, in a statement on 5 May, blamed the inability of governments to grant justice in such cases, which he said led people to take law into their own hands..
According to him, in the Bandala village incident, the SGPC team headed by Darshan Singh reported that the CCTV camera clearly showed the boy entering the gurdwara when it was completely empty and tearing the page of the Guru Granth Sahib...
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