The caretaker of a gurudwara was arrested and booked for murder on Friday in the case where a man was lynched in Punjab’s Kapurthala district, reported NDTV.
On December 19, a man in Kapurthala district’s Nizampur village was beaten and locked up in a room by a mob after he allegedly disrespected the Nishan Sahib, the religious flag of the Sikhs. He was allegedly stabbed to death in front of the police after Senior Superintendent of Police Harkamalpreet Singh Khakh and his team entered the room forcefully.
Apart from caretaker Amarjit Singh, around 100 unidentified people have also been included in the case, the police said on Friday. Of these, 25 to 30 of them were armed.
“We have registered a case of murder against 100 people to set an example that lynching cannot be allowed,” Jalandhar Range Inspector General GS Dhillon said, according to The Tribune.
Shortly before the murder case was filed, Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi said that there was no evidence of sacrilege in Kapurthala, India Today reported. He also said that the first information report in the incident would be modified to include a murder charge.
“We did not find any sacrilege attempt in Kapurthala or any evidence to back it,” Channi said. “One person ran the gurdwara. This thing has moved to murder and the inquiry is on. The FIR [already registered in the case] will be amended.”
The police had earlier booked the man who was killed under Indian Penal Code Section 295A (punishment for damaging a place of worship).
The postmortem report of the man revealed that there were 30 injuries on his body most of which were sharp cuts, PTI reported on Wednesday.
Senior Medical Officer Narinder Singh said that a five-member board of doctors from the civil hospital conducted the man’s autopsy examination. His viscera was taken for chemical examination to check for intoxicants. The doctors also took samples of the man’s hair, teeth and blood for his DNA test. The man was later cremated as no one had claimed his body.
The unidentified man in Kapurthala was killed a day after another man died in an altercation with devotees at the Golden Temple in Amritsar after he had tried to pick up a kirpan (ceremonial sword) kept in front of the Sikh holy text Guru Granth Sahib. The police are yet to register a murder case in this matter.
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