Sacrilege: Publisher detained

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 25

The Amritsar police today rounded up Raghubir Singh, owner of the Jawahar Singh and Kirpal Singh Printing Press, regarding yesterday’s incident of sacrilege in Jalandhar.

Jalandhar Police Commissioner Arpit Shukla said the publisher was identified after his firm’s name was found printed on the ‘bir’ pages recovered from the Bist Doab canal. He said a team of the local police would go to Amritsar tomorrow to further investigate the matter.

Shukla said the pages seemed to be from a three-decade-old proof reader’s copy of the holy book which was discarded for reasons yet to be ascertained.

“There is a procedure to dispose of old ‘saroops’. It was not followed in this case,” he added. Raghubir’s name has been added to the FIR registered at Basti Bawa Khel police station yesterday.

Meanwhile, local Sikh organisations left the dharna site at the Kapurthala chowk here, while some other groups decided to stay put.

Sukhjit Singh Khosa, president of the Satkar Parchar Committee, said typographical errors had been detected in the pages recovered, which suggested foul play.