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Vienna Sikhs
suffer, new revelations shock
WSN Bureau
 AMRITSAR:
Revealing shocking details from the Vienna shootout case in which a
sect leader of the Ravidassia community was fatally injured and
later died, a visiting Sikh from Vienna and the father of a Sikh
youth who has been booked for the murder have described how the
Sikhs continuously protested sacrilegious actions at the Ravidassia
shrine, and how the sect leader was killed in a gun fight that
ensued when Sikhs were set upon by hooligans inside the shrine.
“Without getting
to know the facts of the case, and without making even preliminary
efforts to find out the cause of the fracas, the
Punjab
government’s actions of sending a plane to bring the body to
Punjab and
expressing sympathy with only one side involved in the fracas have
put the Sikh community under immense pressure in
Austria.
Such actions have resulted in the community being seen as the guilty
party without even a thorough probe,” Sukhdev Singh of
Vienna
told the media at a press conference arranged by Dal Khalsa.
Accompanied by
Satnam Singh, father of one of the arrested Sikh youth, Jaspal
Singh, Sukhdev said of the three gurdwaras in
Vienna,
two were in District-22 and District-12 while the controversial
shrine in District-15 had long been guilty of not following the
Maryada. He said local Sikhs pursued the management of the shrine
for a long time to get them to stick to the Maryada but “whenever
these two leaders, Niranjan Dass and Ramanand, visited Vienna, they
would be seated on a separate stage parallel to Sri Guru Granth
Sahib ji and their followers would pay respects only to them and not
to the Guru Granth Sahib ji.”
He said on May
24, when the incident occurred, one of the Sikhs objected to such
practice which led to a scuffle. As if on cue, the hooligan
supporters of the two babas pounced not only on this one Sikh but
rather manhandled every other Sikh found in the vicinity.
“The Sikhs were
severely beaten, their hair were pulled, boiling tea, dal from the
langar, oil was poured on them and they were being set upon by many
men. It was in this fracas that one of the Sikhs fired in self
defence while shots were also fired from the other side. More than
fifteen rounds were exchanged in which the baba was also injured,”
he said.
The duo said
they would have been satisfied if someone from the Punjab Government
or the SGPC or Akali Dal had visited
Vienna
and tried to get to the rootcause of what happened and the
circumstances of the case. “Instead, the entire conduct resulted in
blaming the Sikhs for the killing, something that has put the
community in grave danger,” they said.
Six people are
currently under arrest in the case, including five from Punjab,
Jaspal Singh, Sukhvinder Singh, Satwinder Singh, Tarsem Singh,
Harjit Singh, and from Haryana, Hardeep Singh. Jaspal Singh’s father
said his son’s and Tarsem Singh’s condition was even now very
serious but he has not been able to visit Vienna because of
financial difficulties.
In a poignant
revelation, he said Jaspal Singh’s mother passed away on August 12,
unable to bear the thought of the trauma that her son was going
through in distant land while the local Akalis were busy championing
themselves as the saviours of the panth.
Both Sukhdev
Singh and Satnam Singh said they were grateful to Delhi Sikh
Gurdwara management Committee (DSGMC) president Paramjit Singh Sarna
who visited Vienna to study for himself the reality. “Otherwise we
were convinced that the Akalis of Punjab have given up on us and we
have been left like orphans to fend for ourselves,” Sukhdev Singh
said.
He said it was
ironical that the government sent a plane to bring the body of the
leader killed there but did not ask anyone to visit the gurdwara
where no “prakash” was held for three “Birs” of Guru Granth Sahib
for 14 days.
The Austrian
resident rued that Akal Takht had directed the SGPC to form a
fact-finding committee some weeks ago, but the latter had failed to
do so. He said even members of the Indian Embassy were adopting a
half-hearted approach to solve their problems.
Dal Khalsa’s
Kanwarpal Singh, who was present at the conference, urged the SGPC
to constitute a fact-finding committee to find out the truth behind
the Vienna incident. He said the SGPC should initiate steps to boost
the morale of Sikhs and draw up programmes to meet promises made to
Sikhs in
Vienna.
26
August 2009
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