Soon after Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi said that no evidence of sacrilege had been found in the Kapurthala lynching case, the caretaker of the Gurudwara, Amarjit Singh, has been arrested and charged with murder.

Additionally, around 100 unnamed people have been listed in the case, out of which 25 to 30 were armed, the police said, according to an NDTV report.

A man accused of attempting to remove the Sikh flag, ‘Nishan Sahib’, at a Gurudwara in Kapurthala, was beaten to death by a mob on December 19. 

“There was no sacrilege in the Kapurthala case. It was a murder. Investigations are on. The FIR will be amended,” Channi had said earlier today. 

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The lynching incident, caught on camera in several videos that circulated, took place in the presence of police. 

The post-mortem was conducted by a five-member board of doctors at the Civil Hospital in Ludhiana on the body of the victim on Thursday. The report revealed that there were around 30 cuts on the neck, head, chest and right hip, possibly inflicted by swords. 

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City Deputy Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh, who was present in the hospital, told the media that police tried their best to establish his identity but no one came forward to claim the body even after a lapse of 72 hours of the lynching incident, according to a PTI report. 

The police had also initially said that there was ‘no visible sign’ of any sacrilege at the Gurudwara situated on the Kapurthala-Subhnapur road. 

A case under Section 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) has been registered on the complaint of the manager of the gurdwara. 

The incident followed a day after another man was lynched to death at the Golden Temple in Amritsar after an alleged attempt of desecration of the Granth Sahib on December 18.

Condemning the killing of the two men, former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh had said that such incidents could polarise people along religious lines, fomenting unrest in the state.