Agencies
NEW DELHI: Former Punjab chief minister capt Amarinder Singh called the killing of Dalit Sikh Lakhbir Singh, 35, by Nihangs for allegedly desecrating of the Sikh holy book of Guru Granth at the Singhu border last Friday.
It was a “terrible, awful tragedy,” Capt Amarinder Singh said in an interview with a news portal.
The former Punjab chief minister said, “I don’t believe that he was doing be-adbi or sacrilege because there were too many people. The person who did it (killed him) was in a frame of mind he could not control. He could have been intoxicated. Nihangs are known to take ‘sukha’ (a form of intoxication).”
Even as this issue has taken the Dalits versus Sikhs angle, many experts of Sikhism point out the most of the new Nihangs are Dalit.
These experts also point out that Giani Harpreet Singh, the jathedar of Akal Takht, which is the highest temporal seat for Sikhs, is a Dalit. Bibi Jagir Kaur, who is the president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), comes from other backward caste. Both the Akal Takht jathedar and the SGPC see a conspiracy behind the desecration of the Sikh scripture at the Singhu border where the farmers have sitting in protest for the past 11 months against the three farm laws.
However, Dalit outfits are up in arms. About 21 Dalit bodies from across India have written to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, seeking strict action against the culprits.
National Commission for Scheduled Castes chairperson Vijay Sampla has said that though “sacrilege or be-adabi among Sikhs is a severe offence, no one has the right to take the law into his hand.”
Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad, who visited the family of Lakhbir Singh at Cheema Kalan village in Tarn Taran district on Monday, demanded a CBI investigation into the lynching.
He gave Rs 5,000 in cash to the victim’s sister Raj Kaur and demanded a compensation of Rs 1 crore from the government to the family which has nowhere to go.
