Bargari Beadbi: torn angs found

Who: Residents of Bargari and nearby villages in Faridkot district; Sikh organisations that had been holding dharnas since the theft of a bir in June; the Punjab Police; and the SAD-BJP government of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

What: On the morning of 12 October 2015 residents going to the gurdwara for morning prayers found more than 110 pages of Sri Guru Granth Sahib strewn near a gurdwara in Bargari. Protesters said the pages came from the bir stolen on 1 June from a gurdwara in Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village. For five months Sikh groups had held many dharnas in Faridkot over the failure to recover it and arrest the accused. Bargari observed a complete bandh, villagers marched in the evening carrying the torn pages, and protesters sat down at a Kotkapura crossing, blocking the roads to Bathinda, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Muktsar and Patiala. Police officers and the deputy commissioner asked them to end the dharna. They refused until the accused were arrested.

On 14 October police fired on protesters at Kotkapura and at Behbal Kalan. Two Sikhs protesting the beadbi, Gurjit Singh of Sarawan and Krishan Bhagwan Singh of Niamiwala, were killed at Behbal Kalan. The Takht heads had pardoned the Dera Sacha Sauda chief on 24 September, and withdrew the pardon on 16 October. The Justice Ranjit Singh Commission later said the Behbal Kalan firing came without warning and without permission from the civil authorities, and called the force used at both places unwarranted.

Where: Bargari, Faridkot district, Punjab. The protest spread to Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan.

Why it mattered: The government's handling of the case came under years of scrutiny. The SAD-BJP government changed its director general of police and handed the Bargari investigation to the CBI. On 10 November 2015 more than one lakh people gathered at Chabba, near Amritsar, for a Sarbat Khalsa that named Jagtar Singh Hawara, a prisoner in the Beant Singh case, officiating Akal Takht jathedar and revoked the Panth Rattan title given to Parkash Singh Badal in 2011. SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar called its resolutions null and void.

After the Congress took office in 2017, Justice Ranjit Singh (retd) examined 162 desecration incidents, 12 of them after March 2017. The Punjab Vidhan Sabha took up the report on 27 August 2018. It said the chief minister's office was apparently kept in the loop on Kotkapura, and The Tribune reported it as naming Badal for his "apparent involvement" in the police action. The SAD rejected the findings as motivated. In February 2019 a Special Investigation Team arrested IGP Paramraj Singh Umranangal, accused of directing police at Kotkapura to use firearms.