Sacrilege of holy books in Punjab continues unabated with another such incident coming into light in ludhiana on Friday. The torn pages of Sikhs’ holy book were found scattered on a road in Chandan Nagar area in the morning.
The situation, however, remained peaceful and no protest was held even as the Sikhs gathered at the place of incident.
DCP Investigation Bhupinder Singh, along with CIA officials, reached the spot.
Pritam Nagar-resident Iqbal Singh, who was the first to notice the pages, said that he was on his morning walk when he noticed the torn pages and sounded others.
“As we started following the lane on which the pages were found scattered, we found that the entire stretch leading towards Dussehra ground was filled with pages. We collected them in four polythene bags,” Singh added.
ACP Digvijay Kapil said that the CCTV footage from three areas was being scanned to identity the miscreants.
Meanwhile, Punjab Congress charged the Badal Government with trying to polarise the State on communal lines by instigating sacrilegious attacks ahead of the Assembly polls.
Coming down heavily on the Akali government for failing to prevent incidents of desecration of the Sikh holy book, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) leaders including ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh, Gurdev lapran and Gurmail Pehalwan said that the discovery of torn pages of Guru Granth Sahib clearly suggested a conspiracy to incite communal tension. Alleging a nexus between the Badal government and miscreants engaged in such acts of destabilizing the state, they said that there was a clear pattern in such incidents, which had witnessed a major spike in recent months, as elections in Punjab were drawing closer.
They called upon the Union Home Ministry to take up the matter at the highest levels and order an independent probe to get at the root of such sacrilegious acts.
The leaders also demanded immediate arrest and stringent action against the culprits to send out a strong message to miscreants, acting at the behest of Akali leaders, that such acts would not be tolerated.