Mohinder Pal Singh Bittu

Mohinder Pal Singh Bittu (also written Mohinderpal or Mahinder Pal) was a Dera Sacha Sauda follower from Kotkapura in Faridkot district who ran a bakery and sat on the Dera's state committee, according to The Tribune. He was the prime accused in the 2015 sacrilege cases in Faridkot district. He was never convicted: he was killed in custody in June 2019, before the cases reached a verdict.

Key moments

• 2015: a saroop of Sri Guru Granth Sahib was stolen from a gurdwara at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on 1 June, and torn pages were scattered at Bargari on 12 October. The SIT's final report says Bittu, angered that the film MSG-2 was not released, organised a three-day dharna at Moga and plotted revenge with companions.
• August 2017: he went absconding after Gurmeet Ram Rahim's conviction, and was one of 150 followers booked by Panchkula police over violence after it.
• June 2018: the SIT arrested him at Palampur in Himachal Pradesh, with three other Dera followers held at Kotkapura. His brother told The Tribune that he was being made a scapegoat to pacify the protesters.
• 22 June 2019: killed in New Nabha jail. Police said two inmates serving life terms, Maninder Singh and Gursewak Singh, struck him with iron rods, and a third accused, Lakhbir Singh Lakha, beat him with a wooden stick. A challan named four accused, and police named Jaspreet Singh alias Nihal Singh as the mastermind.
• He had missed a Faridkot court date on 14 June because he was not produced; four jail officials were suspended.
• 22 August 2022: on a petition by his wife, the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered a new SIT, headed by an Additional Director General of Police, to take over the probe into his death. She alleged a conspiracy at the instance of senior police officers; that is her allegation.
• May 2024: the High Court granted bail to Gursewak Singh and two others booked in the killing (Sikh Siyasat News). The sources opened here report no verdict.

Two readings of the killing. Police attribute it to revenge for his alleged part in Bargari. A relative told The Tribune in 2020 that the real culprits had not been identified. These are police and family claims, not court findings.

The record on his guilt. The CBI had earlier filed a closure report finding no evidence of the Dera's involvement, and his wife told the High Court that the CBI had given him a clean chit. The Punjab SIT's final report of 21 April 2022, handed to Sikh leaders by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, counters the CBI and blames the Dera, naming Gurmeet Ram Rahim as a conspirator. Neither report is a court verdict, and he did not live to answer the charges.

What he is remembered for. As the prime accused in the 2015 Bargari sacrilege cases, whose death in custody left those cases without their main defendant and left the question of who stood behind the thefts to the courts.