Punjab sacrilege case: 'Hang the accused in public,' says Navjot Sidhu

Addressing a rally at Malerkotla on Sunday, Sidhu said that those accused of sacrilege must be hanged in public.

Even as investigations are underway into the two lynchings that happened after alleged sacrilege attempts in Punjab, state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu has made provocative statements that are bound to snowball into a major controversy. Addressing a rally at Malerkotla on Sunday, Sidhu said that those accused of sacrilege must be hanged in public.

At a time when prominent leaders have strongly condemned the alleged sacrilege attempts but refrained from remarks about mob lynchings of the accused, Sidhu said that there is a conspiracy against the Punjabi community and their faith and that deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings should be dealt with deterrent punishment.

Be it the Gita or Quran or Guru Granth Sahib, anyone who insults these scriptures should be hanged in public, Sidhu said, adding, "Mistakes do happen, but this is not a mistake. This is a conspiracy to destroy the social fabric, end a community's existence and kill the roots of the faith." Sidhu, who was accompanied by cabinet minister Razia Sultana and her husband Mohammad Mustafa, declared that anyone who takes on the Sikh faith will never succeed.

Stating that fundamentalist forces were disturbing national unity, Sidhu said Punjab will always oppose any attempt to project a religion as higher and the other lower across the nation. Meanwhile, the police have been unable to identify either of the two people who were beaten to death at Amritsar's Golden Temple and in Kapurthala. One of the angles that the Punjab Police is probing is whether both the accused knew each other and if they were part of a conspiracy.