Piara Singh Bhaniarawala

Piara Singh Bhaniarawala headed a dera at Bhaniara village near Nurpur Bedi in Ropar district, Punjab. The Tribune calls him a self-styled godman. It says he came from Dhamiana village in Rupnagar district and was one of seven children of Tulsi Ram, caretaker of two mazars. After his father's death he left a job as a peon in the horticulture department, took the title "Baba" and set up his dera on land he had encroached from the Forest Department. He proclaimed himself the incarnation of Guru Gobind Singh. The Tribune says he had thousands of followers, mainly from the Dalit community, and that political figures such as the former Union Minister Buta Singh joined him.

The Panth and the courts: The Tribune reports that in 1998 the Akal Takht, under Jathedar Bhai Ranjit Singh, excommunicated him from the Sikh Panth, and that his followers did not disperse. In 2001 he wrote a book that the Tribune names Bhav Sagar Samunder Granth. It was banned, and his followers were accused of burning birs of the Guru Granth Sahib in Ropar and Fatehgarh Sahib. One complaint behind the cases that ended in 2013 came from Major Singh, sarpanch of Rattangarh village, who accused the Baba of stealing a Guru Granth Sahib from the village gurdwara; the Tribune says police recovered pages 91 to 157 of it from the Baba and his followers.

Key moments

• 1998: excommunicated by the Akal Takht.
• September 2001: arrested under the National Security Act and jailed for nine months.
• May 2003: a sessions court acquitted him and two others, for lack of proof, in a case over the alleged burning of a gurdwara at Tarkhan Majra. He was also acquitted in an Arms Act case in 2009.
• 24 September 2003: stabbed by a youth outside the Ambala court while he was on trial there.
• 10 May 2013: Chief Judicial Magistrate A. K. Jain of Ambala held him and seven followers guilty, in two cases registered at Morinda police station in 2001, of hurting the religious sentiments of Sikhs. Five other accused were acquitted for want of evidence and two had died during the trial.
• 13 May 2013: sentenced to three years' imprisonment, as were the seven followers. They were released on bail, with a surety of Rs 40,000 each, while they appealed to the sessions court.
• 30 December 2019: died aged 61, on the way to a hospital in Mohali.

Remembered for: He is remembered as the dera head whom the Akal Takht excommunicated and whom an Ambala court, with seven followers, sentenced over the Guru Granth Sahib cases of 2001. The sources opened here do not say how his appeal ended. In his last years, the Tribune says, he kept a low profile, though many followers still visited him.