Protest­ing the quash­ing of the Pun­jab Po­lice re­port into the 2015 sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib at Kotka­pura by the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court, ac­tivists of Dal Khalsa, United Akali Dal and Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal (Am­rit­sar) marched to the High Court premises but were stopped yards away, de­tained and sub­se­quently re­leased. They were shout­ing slo­gans and dis­play­ing hand-held plac­ards ask­ing the Pun­jab CM to dis­miss the in­ef­fi­cient Ad­vo­cate Gen­eral Atul Nanda of the state for his acute lax­ity and in­ef­fi­ciency in han­dling the sen­si­tive case. WSN re­ports.

PAN­THIC CIR­CLES ARE HEART­BRO­KEN at the de­nial of jus­tice by the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court, which likely went over­board and quashed the en­tire re­port of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Team re­port into the in­ci­dent painstak­ingly pre­pared by IG Po­lice Kun­war Vi­jay Pratap Singh, who has since re­tired. The re­port, sub­mit­ted to the court, pur­port­edly ac­cused for­mer Pun­jab CM Parkash Singh Badal, his son and Akali Dal Badal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal and oth­ers for the sac­ri­lege.

There is deep re­sent­ment against the High Court or­der in Pun­jab and across the Di­as­pora in In­dia and other coun­tries.

The protest which was led by Dal Khal­sa’s Kan­war Pal Singh, United Akali Dal’s Gur­deep Singh Bhatinda, Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Am­rit­sar’s Jaskaran Singh and Sukhraj Singh -son of one of the mar­tyrs of the Be­hbal Kalan fir­ing protest­ing the sac­ri­lege, while march­ing to­wards the court premises shouted slo­gans against the ju­di­ciary and the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment call­ing them bi­ased. One of the slo­gans, held by the Dal Khalsa leader read, Or­der! Or­der!! Or­der!!! -There is no jus­tice for Sikhs in Hin­dus­tan.”

Pan­thic ac­tivists Nar­ien Singh Chaura and Emaan Singh Mann also par­tic­i­pated in the march to­wards the High Court.

Within min­utes, when the Sikh youth in the protest at­tempted to break the po­lice bar­ri­cades, in their ef­forts to reach the High Court, around 50 of the pro­tes­tors courted ar­rest and the Chandi­garh Po­lice and took them to Po­lice Sta­tion Sarang­pur, but were let off in the af­ter­noon.

Sharply re­act­ing to the de­ten­tion of ac­tivists, in­clud­ing ag­grieved fam­ily mem­bers, Sukhraj Singh called it ‘un­de­mo­c­ra­tic.’

Dal Khalsa spokesper­son Kan­war Pal Singh while speak­ing to WSN said, “The High Court or­der re­flects the ut­ter fail­ure of the Amarinder Singh-led Pun­jab gov­ern­ment and the first step that the Pun­jab CM should take is to dis­miss Ad­vo­cate Gen­eral Atul Nanda and the en­tire team that as­sisted him in the mat­ter for per­form­ing such a shoddy job.”

“If the Chief Min­is­ter of Pun­jab fails to do so, then he should pre­pare to face pub­lic ire,” he added.

Gur­deep Singh of the United Akali Dal said, “The Chief Min­is­ter is only do­ing lip ser­vice and is sim­ply not keen on de­liv­er­ing jus­tice. From Barghari to Be­hbal Kalan, from Kotka­pura to Maur, it is a story of the ut­ter fail­ure of the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment to nail and pun­ish cul­prits and guilty Pun­jab po­lice top hi­er­ar­chy and those ac­tu­ally di­rectly in­volved in the crimes.”

Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal’s Jaskaran Singh, toe­ing his party line said that all such in­jus­tice is hap­pen­ing to us be­cause Sikhs are treated as sec­ond-class cit­i­zens and are not free peo­ple.

Kan­warpal Singh pointed out that to date, the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment has not dared to bring the in­fa­mous Sirsa cult head Gurmeet Ram Rahim on a war­rant for in­ter­ro­ga­tion in the Kotka­pura sac­ri­lege case.

All pro­tes­tors were unan­i­mous that we will not rest till jus­tice is done.  “The quash­ing of the re­port by the courts is not the last word and we are de­ter­mined to con­tinue our strug­gle for jus­tice in sac­ri­lege cases, said Kan­war Pal Singh of the Dal Khalsa.