Amritsar: Angry ‘Sangat’ killed a man after he allegedly attempted to commit sacrilege in the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple on Saturday. Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi has directed state police authorities to thoroughly probe into the entire matter to zero in on the underlying motive and real conspirators behind this dastardly act. The man belonged from Uttar Pradesh. The opposition Akali Dal was quick to attack the state government over Saturday’s incident which, it said, was a “deep-rooted conspiracy”. “The state and the central government must look into this. It’s an attempt to weaken Punjab which is the sword arm of India. Some people have made it a political game over the last five years,” Akali Dal MP Balwinder Bhunder said.
According to witnesses, the man jumped over the railing of the sanctum sanctorum inside the Golden Temple during the daily evening prayer and tried to grab the sword kept in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs. He was stopped and killed by those present. The police confirmed the man was killed after the incident and said they were checking all CCTV cameras in their efforts to find out where he had come from, when he entered the Golden Temple and how many people were with him.
“This evening during prayers, a man jumped the fence and entered the enclosed area. The congregation was offering prayers and bowing down,” Parminder Singh Bhandal, the Deputy Commissioner of Police of Amritsar, said. “The man, about 20 to 25 years of age who had a yellow cloth tied on his head jumped the fence… the people inside held him and escorted him out to the corridor where there was a violent altercation and he died,” he said. “He was alone. Postmortem will be done today. We will verify where he was from,” Mr Bhandal added.