Man is beaten to death after ‘sacrilegious’ attempt to interrupt prayers at Sikhism’s holiest shrine which was caught on live TV in India
- Man beaten to death after disrupting prayers in Sikhism’s holiest shrine in India
- Jumped over a railing into Golden Temple’s inner sanctum, Amritsar, on Saturday
- He tried to get a sword kept in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book
- Probed launched to determine the ‘underlying motive behind the dastardly act’
- *** WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT ***
A man has been beaten to death in India after a ‘sacrilegious’ attempt to interrupt prayers at Sikhism’s holiest shrine in an incident caught on live television.
Local media reported that the unidentified man jumped over a railing into the Golden Temple’s inner sanctum during Saturday evening prayers in the northern city of Amritsar.
Footage from inside the temple shows a man wearing blue clothes and a yellow pagri leap over the railing into the inner sanctum and grab a sword kept in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book.
He is then grabbed by worshippers who violently drag him back over the railing and out of the inner sanctum.
Separate video shows a man sitting next to the prayer leader jump up to stop the assailant, on the left edge of the shot, as he leaps into the sanctum.
Footage, which MailOnline has chosen not to publish, purports to show the man with his hands tied behind his back being beaten and kicked.
Footage, which MailOnline has chosen not to publish, purports to show the man with his hands tied behind his back being beaten and kicked
Footage from inside the temple shows a man wearing blue clothes and a yellow pagri leap over the railing into the inner sanctum and grab a sword kept in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book
He is then grabbed by worshippers who violently drag him back over the railing and out of the inner sanctum
Video shows a man sitting next to the prayer leader jump up to stop the assailant, on the left edge of the shot, as he leaps into the sanctum
Police told New Delhi Television that the man was killed after the incident and that they were checking CCTV footage to glean more information.
‘The man, about 20 to 25 years of age, had a yellow cloth tied on his head and jumped the fence… the people inside held him and escorted him out to the corridor where there was a violent altercation and he died,’ Parminder Singh Bandal, deputy commissioner of Amritsar police, told the channel.
Punjab state chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi condemned the man’s ‘most unfortunate and heinous act’ in a series of tweets from his office late on Saturday.
Channi also ordered a probe to find out the ‘underlying motive and real conspirators behind the dastardly act.’
Defence of the Guru Granth Sahib and Sikh shrines against desecration is a highly sensitive issue for the community.
Former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 after she ordered a brutal army assault on the Golden Temple to flush out separatists.
Her killing sparked a bloody pogrom in the capital New Delhi which left nearly 3,000 Sikhs dead.
In 2015, a controversial biopic of Sikhism’s founder Guru Nanak was pulled after protests prompted by his depiction in human form, which is against the tenets of the religion.
And a group of Nihang – a warrior order within the Sikh faith – tortured and killed a man on the outskirts of New Delhi in October after accusing him of desecrating the holy book.
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