A day after Dera Sacha Sauda follower’s murder Mahinder Pal Bittu — the accused in 2015 sacrilege case in Punjab, inside the Nabha high-security jail, the Sirsa-based Sect made it clear that it would not allow his cremation until the sacrilege cases against him were dropped.
At the same time, the Sect also demanded to put behind bars the “real” culprits who killed Bittu inside the jail.
The Dera members, who had gathered at Kotkapura Naam Charcha Ghar where Bittu’s body was kept, also demanded judicial probe into the incident, making it clear that the body will not be cremated till then.
“We want judicial probe into the attack incident. While the police has identified two persons who carried out the attack, but we want that those who planned the attack should be identified and punished,” they said.
The decision was taken by the Sect’s 45-member executive committee which claimed that the murder was not as impulsive as the police claimed, “but it was a carefully planned act that likely had some big people behind it”.
The Dera maintained that until the name of these bigwigs is not disclosed, there would be no cremation.
“How did Bittu, who was lodged in a separate cell, come out in the open and was attacked. Till the time these things become clear we will not cremate the body,” a Dera member told reporters in Kotkapura.
Another sect member claimed that Bittu was "falsely booked" in the sacrilege case and it should be dropped.
Bittu, the prime suspect in a case relating to the desecration of Guru Granth Sahib in Bargari in 2015, was beaten to death in the high-security Nabha prison, near Patiala, by a murder convict and a murder accused on Saturday evening.
KNOW MAHINDER PAL BITTU
Belonging to Kotkapura town in Faridkot district, Mahinder Pal Bittu was wanted in many sacrilege cases, including violence in Haryana’s Panchkula town after the conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in 2017. He was arrested in 2018 by a special investigation team from Himachal Pradesh’s Palampur town.
Owner of a bakery shop, Bittu had been absconding since August 2017 following the conviction of Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. He was one of the around 150 Dera followers booked by the Panchkula police for violence that broke out after the Dera head’s conviction.
He had been lodged in the high-security Nabha jail for the past 11 months.
In June 2018, the Kotkapura police had booked Bittu for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of Sikhs, carrying an illegal weapon and being involved in unlawful activities.
A case under Section 295-A of the IPC, Sections 13(1) and 17 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Sections 25, 54 and 59 of the Arms Act was registered against him.
He was accused in many sacrilege incidents, including the one that took place at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala and Bargari.
According to the police, a Sikh scripture was recovered from his house lying in a disrespectful condition in scrap last year. The police also seized a piece of paper on which Bittu and his associates had scribbled about a plan to disrupt railway traffic.
Twenty-five empty cartridges of a .32 bore gun were also seized from his house.
In April, Faridkot District and Sessions Judge had dismissed the bail plea of Bittu, who had claimed he was falsely implicated in the case. The public prosecutor had claimed that Bittu was involved in not one, but many cases of sacrilege. Bittu was also involved in damaging public property in Moga in 2011, he added.
During an investigation into Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura police firing incidents, the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission had also identified Bittu as one of the main conspirators who planned sacrilege.