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Updated: Jul 26, 2019 08:34 IST

Giving a clean chit to Dera Sacha Sauda followers in the 2015 Bargari sacrilege case, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has trashed the findings of the Punjab Police special investigation team (SIT) led by deputy inspector general of police RS Khatra.

In a 25-page closure report filed by the CBI in a Mohali court on July 4 — a copy of which was provided to the complainants on Wednesday —the central probe agency said dera followers Mohinder Pal Bittu, who was recently murdered in a Nabha jail, Sukhjinder Singh alias Sunny and Shakti Singh were not involved in the case. “Involvement of Bittu, Sunny and Shakti prime facie could not be established due to want of evidence,” said the CBI, seeking closure of the case citing “lack of

evidence to connect the accused to the crime despite covering all aspects in the investigation”.

In November 2015, the previous SAD-BJP government handed over the investigation of three sacrilege cases — theft of a ‘bir’ of Guru Granth Sahib from a Burj Jawahar Singh Wala

gurdwara on June 1, 2015, putting up of hand-written sacrilegious posters in Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on September 25 and torn pages of the holy book being found at Bargari on October 12, 2015 — to the CBI. The CBI also claimed that there was no eyewitness to the theft of a ‘bir’ from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala gurdwara.

The SIT theory of recovering an Alto car used to transport the stolen ‘bir’ also fell flat in the CBI probe. “The second-hand car was purchased in the name of Shakti’s brother Ravinder Singh on August 8, 2016, and it was registered with RTO, Faridkot, on October 4, 2016. Thus, it could not have been used by Shakti in June 2015 for carrying stolen bir as claimed by the SIT,” the CBI probe revealed. Similarly, the Tata Indigo car, which the SIT claimed was used by Bittu for carrying the stolen ‘bir’, was sold to Bittu’s son only in January 2017, the CBI said.

Polygraph Test Negative

The CBI report said neither the fingerprints nor the voice samples and the polygraph test established the involvement of Bittu and other accused in the case.

The forensic and psychological assessment of 18 persons involved in the case were analysed by a team of Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), New Delhi, but “no positive result could be found,” said the CBI.

As per the CFSL report, the handwriting on derogatory posters did not match with specimens of any of the 10 persons named by the SIT in the sacrilege incident, including Bittu, Sunny and Shakti, the CBI report said.

The layered voice analysis, report of which was received on September 9, 2018, also did not found anything positive.

Complainant Gora Singh, a granthi at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala gurdwara from where the ‘bir’ was stolen, his wife Swaranjit Kaur and Gurmukh Singh, Jaswinder Singh and Amandeep Singh also passed the lie-detector test, the CBI said.

The CBI also analysed dump data of mobile towers and call records at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala and Bargari when the sacrilege incidents took place but failed to find any lead.

The Punjab government’s September 6 notification withdrawing its consent for the investigation of these cases from the CBI after passing a resolution in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha is also one of the reasons behind the probe agency filing the closure report.