LUDHIANA: The Haryana Police has booked namdhari sect leader Thakur Uday Singh of Bhaini Sahib in Ludhiana for criminal conspiracy in a robbery case at Jiwan Nagar in Rania of  Sirsa district. The case pertains to an August 2018 incident but was registered on June 11, 2020 after a probe by a deputy superintendent of police. Other charges against the sect chief include rioting, unlawful assembly, wrongful confinement and criminal trespass among others. Gurpreet Singh of Sant Nagar village in Rania, who is manager at Messrs Namdhari Dharam Kanda (weighing bridge) there, had told cops that on August 25, 2018, he was on duty at dharam kanda when three men locked him inside a room after taking away his phone and then lead a mob of around 200 people to ransack the premises. He said they had razed a service station nearby with a JCB and taken the debris away in tractor trolleys after releasing him.

The complainant said he had immediately informed Namdhari Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee president Sukhdev Singh and the police. He alleged the accused had acted at the behest of Thakur Uday Singh to vitiate the peaceful atmosphere of the village by hurting religious sentiments. However, Bhaini Sahib spokesperson Lakhbir Singh has rubbished the charges, saying the complainant party had encroached on Thakur Uday Singh’s land and they had gone to take possession of it. He said they had carried relevant documents at the time and were accompanied by police. He said they were taking legal opinion into the FIR registered against the sect chief and will challenge it and also file a defamation case against the complainant.

Meanwhile, the rival namdhari faction has welcomed the police action, saying the sect has never been led by a “self-declared guru” and person booked for criminal offences. Lauding police action, namdhari leaders Navtej Singh, Harvinder Singh and Tajinder Singh said they wanted a thorough investigation into the matter. “Due to their political approach, the usurpers of the sect headquarters are complicit in various nefarious activities like drug smuggling and fake currency printing. But the Punjab government and the Punjab Police have never taken any action against them, which has made them emboldened them. It was because of all this that matriarch Mata Chand Kaur ji was murdered,” they alleged. Rania Police Station SHO sub inspector Sadhu Ram said the matter is being probed and no one has been arrested in the case as yet.

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