Af­ter 15 gru­el­ing years of le­gal bat­tle, 27 Sikh youth ac­cused of ri­ot­ing in 2008 have been ac­quit­ted by the Ses­sions Court in Mum­bai, bring­ing much-needed re­lief to the ac­cused and the Sikh com­mu­nity at large. Singh Sabha Mum­bai Dadar was at the fore­front of pro­vid­ing le­gal as­sis­tance and sup­port to the ac­cused and their fam­i­lies.  Ses­sions Court Mum­bai Judge U. C. Desh­mukh’s land­mark de­ci­sion was based on the lack of ev­i­dence against the ac­cused. WSN Re­ports.

In June 2008, pseudo-saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim made an ap­pear­ance at the Nir­mal Lifestyle Mall in Mum­bai’s east­ern sub­urb of Mu­lund. Out­raged by Ram Rahim’s blas­phe­mous im­per­son­ation of Guru Gob­ind Singh, the revered 10th Sikh Guru, a large group of Sikh youth gath­ered in protest. The event took a deadly turn when one of Ram Rahim’s per­sonal gun­men shot and killed Balkar Singh, a trans­porter from Mu­lund.

The reper­cus­sions of this act led to the po­lice ac­cus­ing 27 Sikh youth of ri­ot­ing. Al­though they ob­tained bail within seven days thanks to the in­ter­ven­tion of Singh Sabha Mum­bai Dadar, they have been at­tend­ing court hear­ings ever since.

From the be­gin­ning, Singh Sabha Mum­bai Dadar has pro­vided full le­gal sup­port to the ac­cused and their fam­i­lies.  Late Tara Singh, MLA from Mum­bai had also in­ter­vened on their be­half with the gov­ern­ment of Ma­ha­rash­tra. Ad­vo­cate Saveena Kaur Bedi has been ap­plauded for her role in rep­re­sent­ing the ac­cused since 2019 ef­fec­tively.

Speak­ing to World Sikh News, Singh Sabha Pres­i­dent Man­mo­han Singh said, “With the Grace of God, the bad name brought upon the com­mu­nity of ri­ot­ing has been oblit­er­ated with this judg­ment. It is a big re­lief. I thank the San­gat for their sup­port.”

Balkar Singh, who was killed by a gun­man of pseudo-saint Ram RahimDe­spite the re­lief felt over the re­cent ac­quit­tal, the case has also high­lighted the pro­longed strug­gle of Balkar Singh’s fam­ily for jus­tice. In 2011, a case against 14 body­guards of Ram Rahim re­sulted in ac­quit­tal due to lack of ev­i­dence. The state’s ap­peal in the Bom­bay High Court was sub­se­quently re­jected, leav­ing the fam­ily in a state of con­tin­ued sor­row.

It may be men­tioned that the Mum­bai Po­lice did a shoddy job in pros­e­cut­ing the gun­man as the pros­e­cu­tion case, es­pe­cially the part re­lat­ing to bal­lis­tic records was not ap­pro­pri­ately pre­sented to the court.

More­over, the fail­ure of the Ma­ha­rash­tra gov­ern­ment to act against Ram Rahim re­mains a point of dis­con­tent for the Sikh com­mu­nity. How­ever, it’s noted that Ram Rahim is cur­rently serv­ing time in jail for dou­ble rape and dou­ble mur­der.

The ac­quit­tal comes as a sen­si­tive point for re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties around the globe grap­pling with is­sues re­lated to blas­phemy.

The ac­quit­tal comes as a sen­si­tive point for re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties around the globe grap­pling with is­sues re­lated to blas­phemy. In a world in­creas­ingly po­lar­ized along re­li­gious lines, this case serves as a stark re­minder of the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing and re­spect­ing re­li­gious sen­si­bil­i­ties.

The ver­dict, there­fore, not only ex­on­er­ates the ac­cused but also brings to the fore the chal­lenges sur­round­ing the is­sue of blas­phemy, par­tic­u­larly how it can lead to so­cial un­rest. The re­lief felt by the Sikh com­mu­nity ex­tends be­yond Mum­bai and res­onates with Sikhs glob­ally.

For the Sikh com­mu­nity in Mum­bai and be­yond, the ac­quit­tal serves as a mo­ment to re­flect upon the com­plex in­ter­play be­tween re­li­gion, law, and so­cial jus­tice.