NCM seeks details of incidents of sacrilege in Punjab in past 45 years

The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has written a letter to the Chief Secretary, Punjab, asking authorities to share a list of all incidents of sacrilege that have taken place in the State in the past 45 years.

The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has written a letter to the Chief Secretary, Punjab, asking authorities to share a list of all incidents of sacrilege that have taken place in the State in the past 45 years. This has been done in order to analyse why frequent incidents of sacrilege occur in the State and are not being prevented, the NCM said.

This comes after an incident of sacrilege at Gurudwara Sahib in Morinda, where a man forcefully entered the religious place and assaulted the priests performing Akhand Path (uninterrupted recitation of the holy book Sri Guru Guru Granth Sahib). “The accused also disrespected the Sri Guru Guru Granth Sahib, which hurt the sentiments of the people,” the NCM noted.

A video of the incident went viral on social media on April 24 while the Punjab Police confirmed the attack.

The Commission, formed under the NCM Act of 1992, is responsible for safeguarding the interests of minority communities. It maintained that in the above case, the criminal was identified and “legal action may have been taken”.

But Punjab has a long history of communal violence and many incidents could have been averted if criminals had been penalised by competent courts and “a free and fair enquiry conducted in all those cases”, the NCM noted in the letter written to the Chief Secretary.

Meanwhile, Delhi BJP MLA Manjinder Singh Sirsa took to Twitter to criticise the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab. “Deeply pained to see this video from Gurdwara Sahib in Morinda where the sacrilege incident happened. The current government has encouraged lawlessness and such incidents with its lax attitude. Their promise of justice in Behbal Kalan incident was also a lie. We need stronger laws and action on sacrilege so that the anti-social elements shouldn’t dare to hurt the religious feelings of people,” he wrote.