Kapurthala granthi held for murder, there was no sacrilege, say police

FIVE DAYS after the lynching of a youth at a gurdwara in Kapurthala district, police Friday booked the gurdwara granthi, Amarjit Singh, on the charge of murder and arrested him.

- ANJU AGNIHOTRI CHABA

Police also booked around 100 unidentified people, including 25-30 "accomplices" of Amarjit, and claimed recovery of a pistol used in a firing incident that day.

While they ruled out any desecration and called it a murder, police said they were looking at the possibility of the killing being part of a conspiracy to “sensationalise" the sacrilege issue.

Granthi held The youth, who remains unidentified but is suspected to have been a migrant labourer, was killed on December 19, a day after a lynching at the Golden Temple in Amritsar over an alleged act of “sacrilege”. An autopsy report showed 30 wounds on the body of the youth killed in Kapurthala.

The granthi's arrest followed a statement by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi Friday that investigations into the Kapurthala incident had not found any evidence of desecration. "The youth was lynched. The investigation is pointing towards a murder," he said.

Jalandhar zone IGGS Dhillon said they were probing the matter as a murder from day one, but wanted to be certain before ruling anything out. Police had maintained from the beginning though that they had found no evidence of desecration.

Amarjit, who was sent to twoday police remand, had been named earlier in a case of a stolen carin 2016, police confirmed. The Nawanshahr police had registered a case under Sections 411 and 483 of the IPC, but the car remained untraced and the case was cancelled by the court in 2019.