Bargari sacrilege: SIT arrests 4 dera followers

Faridkot : A special investigation team (SIT) of the Punjab Police, probing the three-year-old sacrilege incidents at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala and Bargari villages of Faridkot, has rounded up four Dera Sacha Sauda followers, suspecting them to be the prime accused in the case.
The SIT has nabbed Mohinder Pal Bittu, state committee member of the dera, from Palampur in Himachal Pradesh. Belonging to Kotkapura town of Faridkot and owner of a bakery shop, Bittu had been absconding since August 2017 following the conviction of dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.
Three more persons were arrested from Kotkapura in the wee hours of Saturday. They are dairy owner Sunny Kanda, his brother Sukhpreet Singh and Jaggi, their relative from Mansa.
A team of six policemen, deployed at Kanda’s house on the Muktsar road in Kotkapura, did not allow anyone to meet the family.
“As sacrilege is a highly sensitive religious issue and any suspect in this case is prone to attack, security has been deployed at Kanda’s house as a preventive measure,” said a senior police officer.
Bittu was one of the 150 dera followers booked by the Panchkula police for violence following the dera head’s conviction.