A senior police officer has claimed the seven different incidents of desecration were inter-related.
Punjab/New Delhi:
A day after the Punjab government claimed Pakistan's intelligence agency was behind the recent incidents of the desecration of the Sikh holy book in the state, there are no signs of a let-up among protesters who have blocked several state and national highways since last week.
"There is a definite foreign hand in this. We will prove it. Culprits will be booked," Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal told NDTV.
At the blockade in Bagha Purana, on the road to Faridkot, a few hundred villagers sat in the main square from 10 am till 5 pm, diverting all vehicles through smaller, more circuitous routes passing through villages, blocking out all vehicular traffic except ambulances.
Jagtar Singh Roday, who recently resigned from the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee over the desecration of the holy book was at another roadblock a few kilometres ahead. "We don't believe what the government claims. Let them show us some concrete evidence and only then will we stop our protests," he said.
On Tuesday, police arrested two brothers from Panchgrain Khurd village near Faridkot, the epicentre of protests, and have claimed they were in touch with their handlers in Dubai and Australia and received foreign funding. A senior police officer even claimed the seven different incidents of desecration were inter-related.
But other than a video of a Pakistani policemen circulating on social media, neither the police nor the government has offered any evidence to support its foreign hand theory.
"The Guru Granth Sahib was stolen in June. Is the government really saying it had no idea all these months or was it not interested in solving the case? Now as protests have intensified they have suddenly discovered there was foreign hand? It all sounds a bit too convenient," Harmander Singh, who sat in protest at Bagha Purana, told NDTV.
"There is a definite foreign hand in this. We will prove it. Culprits will be booked," Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal told NDTV.
At the blockade in Bagha Purana, on the road to Faridkot, a few hundred villagers sat in the main square from 10 am till 5 pm, diverting all vehicles through smaller, more circuitous routes passing through villages, blocking out all vehicular traffic except ambulances.
Jagtar Singh Roday, who recently resigned from the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee over the desecration of the holy book was at another roadblock a few kilometres ahead. "We don't believe what the government claims. Let them show us some concrete evidence and only then will we stop our protests," he said.
On Tuesday, police arrested two brothers from Panchgrain Khurd village near Faridkot, the epicentre of protests, and have claimed they were in touch with their handlers in Dubai and Australia and received foreign funding. A senior police officer even claimed the seven different incidents of desecration were inter-related.
But other than a video of a Pakistani policemen circulating on social media, neither the police nor the government has offered any evidence to support its foreign hand theory.
"The Guru Granth Sahib was stolen in June. Is the government really saying it had no idea all these months or was it not interested in solving the case? Now as protests have intensified they have suddenly discovered there was foreign hand? It all sounds a bit too convenient," Harmander Singh, who sat in protest at Bagha Purana, told NDTV.
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