There is an eerie silence at Nizampur Gurdwara in Kapurthala where a lynching over a suspected sacrilege attempt took place on Sunday, the second such incident in Punjab within a 12-hour period. Theories abound about the “mentally unfit” person who was killed here, but it is almost like a blind case for the authorities.
There are videos and other evidences but the local police are struggling to get witnesses, clear CCTV footage or the identification of the deceased and no case has been registered so far against those who killed the unidentified person. “It was the police who shifted the person from the gurdwara to hospital…there is CCTV footage,” senior superintendent of police (SSP) Harkamalpreet Singh told News18 but did not divulge information on the time when his personnel had reached the spot.
The SSP was in fact busy attending meetings on the upcoming elections in Punjab for much of Tuesday. There is a police post near the gurdwara, barely 20 metres away. But the cops there say they got to know of the purported sacrilege attempt only after a video of the incident went viral and a large number of people gathered outside the gurdwara on Sunday. Even the roadside vendors hardly 5-10 metres away say they didn’t see anything other than the crowd gathering at the gurdwara.
The Nizampur Gurdwara is located on a very busy road and is surrounded by residential areas that are a few hundred metres away from the place of the incident. There is a lot of speculation with the police also changing its version — from first saying the deceased had tried to climb the Nishan Sahib post to commit sacrilege to later saying there were no signs of sacrilege and he was trying to commit a theft. There is clarity that a circulated video of the person getting caught got the crowd to converge there, including the Nihangs— an armed Sikh warrior order.
News18 visited three colonies close to the gurdwara but people appeared oblivious about the details of the incident. “My shop was closed when the incident took place. I got to know that a person had committed sacrilege and he was beaten up by a mob. The rest I don’t know; whatever happened was wrong,” a woman who runs a tea shop nearby said.
Some other locals said they came to know about the matter when the street was surrounded by Nihangs and all approaching roads were blocked. “I don’t know about the incident, all I know is roads were blocked and hundreds of people gathered after an incident of sacrilege. Later, the police intervened and dispersed the crowd,” a local resident said.
Some people accept that the person shouldn’t have been killed and there are theories as to why an allegedly mentally unfit man suddenly reached the gurudwara early in the morning. The police also could not save him from the angry crowd that stormed the room where he was kept after being caught and beaten up. “We had never seen him around. He never visited the gurdwara. But suddenly he jumped into the gurdwara and reached the main area. It seems that somebody deliberately dropped him here, especially after the sacrilege incident that took place in the Golden Temple. Back to back, gurudwaras are being targeted,” a local person said.
With the sacrilege suspect now dead, there are no clear answers.
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