The Justice Ranjit Singh Commission of Inquiry — set up to probe all sacrilege incidents in Punjab — is scheduled to submit its first report on Saturday.
With this, startling revelations are expected to come to the fore, especially when the Special Investigating Team (SIT), formed to probe the sacrilege incidents, has arrested Dera Sacha Sauda followers for their alleged involvement in sacrilege cases, including Bargari.
Justice Ranjit Singh, the retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, is scheduled to meet the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Saturday evening, reportedly to submit the report.
Notably, the interrogation of nine Dera Sacha Sauda followers, who have been arrested in connection with the 2015 Bargari sacrilege incident, has led to the startling revelation about Sirsa-based Dera’s role in desecration of holy books.
The nine arrested Dera followers have disclosed names of top Dera of functionaries, who were acting as their handlers, when they tried to flare-up communal tension in Punjab by tearing off the pages of Guru Granth Sahib, Sikhs’ holy book.
Set up on April 14 a month after the Congress party came to power, the one-man Commission has reportedly completed its probe into the first incident of sacrilege reported from Bargari village in Faridkot district on October 12, 2015.
As many as 110 pages of Guru Granth Sahib, stolen from the Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village in June that year, were found torn off outside a gurudwara.
Following this, about 122 incidents of sacrilege were reported in the state from 2015, with the maximum reported from Amritsar, ludhiana and Jalandhar, that are continuing till date, coupled with widespread protests across the state.
In one of the major protests, two Sikh protesters were killed in police firing on October 14, 2015, at Behbal Kalan village near Faridkot.
The first report would reportedly cover the incidents of desecration of Guru Granth Sahib in Bargadi, and Behbal Kalan, a government official told The Pioneer.
It has been learnt that the Commission has gone deep into the incidents, gathering detailed information — which the previous panel, constituted by the erstwhile SAD-BJP combine, and the police, probing the cases has “failed to take note”.
The Commission has recorded the evidences of witnesses at Bargari and Behbal Kalan villages in gurdwaras.
Besides, the Commission is also said to have established crucial links, covering the political, religious, and administrative aspects. Besides, the Commission is also said to have made certain recommendations to the state police chief in its report.
During the course of investigations, Justice Ranjit Singh has himself travelled to the places where the sacrilege incidents have been reported in the past, and meeting the people concerned, gathering evidences on his own.
The one man Commission of Inquiry is probing the sacrilege incidents from all angles including personal enmity, terrorist activity or conspiracy to disturb peace in the border state of Punjab.
Rubbishing the Justice Zora Singh Commission report, Capt Amarinder had constituted Justice Ranjit Singh panel to look into sacrilege cases since 2015 besides suggesting measures to check the same.
All the cases of desecration of holy books, including Guru Granth Sahib, Quran, Bhagwant Gita, have been included in its terms of reference, besides mandating it to look into the inconclusive investigation done by the police after the incidents.
The Commission, in one of its order, had lashed out at the Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) observing that it took “no measures to check incidents of sacrilege which have gone on unabated”.
