Chandigarh: Amarinder Singh, the former Punjab Chief Minister, has condemned the lynching of two men in the recent alleged sacrilege attempts at gurdwaras in Amritsar and Kapurthala.
Calling the killings "absolutely unacceptable", Amarinder Singh said that sacrilege was wrong, however, killing someone was equally illegal and unjustified.
"Sacrilege is wrong but it is also wrong to kill a person. What is this way? There is a law in this land. If you take him (the accused) to the SGPC office, interrogate him, and then kill him. Is this the way? This is illegal and this is absolutely unacceptable," Singh was quoted by news agency PTI.
No civilised society, he said, should approve of such killings.
"The accused should have been handed over to the police," he added.
Read: Kapurthala lynching victim had eight deep cuts on body; No murder case registered yet
On the issue of people getting angry over denial of justice in the 2015 sacrilege incidents and thus resorting to such killings, Amarinder, who resigned as Punjab Chief Minister in September, said his government had pursued it "right from day one".
"First the state had to fight a long legal battle to get the inquiry back from the Central Bureau of Investigation and then the investigation was started and 22 people, including police officials and civilians, were arrested who are on bail now," he said.
Two men were beaten to death in separate alleged attempted sacrilege incidents in Punjab last week. The first one happened at the Golden Temple on Saturday followed by another such incident in a Gurdwara in Kapurthala district a day later.
