Justice Ranjit Singh submits final report on sacrilege cases

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 16

Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has directed the state home department to take further necessary action on the full and final report on sacrilege cases, which was submitted to him by Justice Ranjit Singh (retd) on Thursday.

The Justice Ranjit Singh Commission had on June 30 submitted Part 1 of his report to the CM. That had dealt with the incidents of sacrilege at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala, Bargari, Gurusar and Mallke villages, as well as the firing incident at Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura.

The final report is in three parts, according to an official spokesperson. Part 2 deals with incidents of sacrilege in SAS Nagar, Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar and Patiala districts, while Part 3 is related to incidents in SBS Nagar (Nawanshahr) and Hoshiarpur districts. Part 4 relates to sacrilege incidents in Amritsar, Bathinda, Barnala, Faridkot, Fazilka, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Mansa, Moga, Sangrur, Muktsar and Tarn Taran districts.

The complete set of reports, along with Action Taken Report (ATR), will be tabled in the next session of the Vidhan Sabha, as already announced by the Chief Minister.

The Chief Minister has repeatedly asserted that those found guilty of trying to create religious disharmony in the state through such actions would be punished.

The Commission was set up in April 2017 by Amarinder-led Congress government to investigate the various incidents of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib and other religious texts. The Congress government had decided to constitute the panel after rejecting as ‘inconclusive’ the findings of the Zora Singh Commission, set up by the SAD-BJP government.

The terms of reference of the Commission were to conduct an inquiry into the cases of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib, Bhagwad Gita and Quran, inquire into the detailed facts and circumstance and chronology of events of what actually happened and to identify as a matter of fact the role played by various persons into what happened, and also to inquire into the truth of what occurred in such incidents and factual role of the persons who might have been involved.

The Commission was also mandated to inquire into the firing in Kotkapura on October 14, 2015 and at village Behbal Kalan, district Faridkot, in which two men died, besides identifying and inquiring into the role of the police officers/officials in incomplete/inconclusive investigations into the earlier incidents of sacrileges so far.

Acting on the first report submitted by the Commission, Punjab Police had included the names of four police personnel in the FIR registered in 2015 in the Behbal Kalan firing incident.