Kotkapura: Five men on motorbikes killed a Dera Sacha Sauda follower, who was facing sacrilege cases, in his shop at Kotkapura in Faridkot district of Punjab and injured his gunman and neighbour.
Pardeep Singh (45) was an accused in a case of theft of a 'bir' (copy) of the Guru Granth Sahib from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village in June 2015 and also in a case linked to torn pages of the Sikh holy book being found scattered at Bargari in Faridkot in October 2015. He was out on bail and had three security guards assigned to him.
So far, seven Dera followers have been killed followinga slew of sacrilege cases in Punjab, in the last seven years. Two of the seven were killed in the canteen of a Dera branch itself. In most of these cases, assailants on motorcycles committed the crimes.
Also Pardeep’s killing is the second in Punjab in a week when a protectee has been eliminated in police presence. Shiv Sena (Taksali) functionary Sudhir Suri was killed when he was accompanied by his security detail in Amritsar on November 4.
In the instant case, the assailants, who seemed to be in their twenties, came on three bikes and parked in front of Pardeep’s milk dairy-cum-grocery shop on Hari Naur Road of Kotkapura around 7am when he was cleaning the shop after opening it. One of them entered the shop while the other four stood guard.
As the youth who entered the shop ran out after shooting Pardeep dead, his accomplices fired at one of the Dera man's gunmen and a person from a neighbouring shop, who was reading a newspaper and was witness to the crime. The attackers then escaped, leaving behind one bike with a Haryana registration number. The Dera man, his gunman Hakam Singh and the neighbouring shop owner were taken to a hospital where the former was declared dead.
