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No fireworks in Golden Temple this Diwali
Amritsar: The holiest of Sikh shrines, Harmandir Sahib, popularly known as the Golden Temple, in this city of Punjab will not be lit up this Diwali in the wake of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib, an official said here on Tuesday.
“Following the incidents of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib across Punjab, we have decided not to celebrate Diwali this time,” Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Avtar Singh Makkar said.
He said there would be no illumination of the Golden Temple and there will be no fireworks display.
The Amritsar-based SGPC, the mini-parliament of Sikh religious affairs, controls Sikh shrines across Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
The SGPC has also urged the Sikhs not to celebrate Diwali with fireworks but light only earthen lamps.
Every Diwali, which is also celebrated in the Sikh religion as ‘Bandi Chhor Diwas’ (prisoner liberation day), the Golden Temple is illuminated with millions of lights and attracts tens of thousands of devotees.
On Diwali, the sixth guru of the Sikhs, Guru Hargobind, returned to Amritsar on being released along with 52 princes by Mughal emperor Jahangir from the Gwalior prison in 1619.
This is the third time in 30 years that there will be no Diwali celebrations at the Golden Temple.
One of the occasions was in 1984 to protest Operation Bluestar, the army operation to flush out militants holed up in the Golden Temple.
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What monkey fled with a bag containing evidence in it: Read full story
The court, generally, considers a person who commit a crime and the one who destroys the evidence, as criminals in the eyes of law. But what if an animal destroys the evidence of a crime committed by a human.
In a peculiar incident in Rajasthan, a monkey fled away with the evidence collected by the police in a murder case. The stolen evidence included the murder weapon (a blood-stained knife).
The incident came to light when the police appeared before the court and they had to provide the evidence in the hearing.
The hearing was about the crime which took place in September 2016, in which a person named Shashikant Sharma died at a primary health center under Chandwaji police station. After the body was found, the deceased’s relatives blocked the Jaipur-Delhi highway, demanding an inquiry into the matter.
Following the investigation, the police had arrested Rahul Kandera and Mohanlal Kandera, residents of Chandwaji in relation to the murder. But, when the time came to produce the evidence related to the case, it was found that the police had no evidence with them because a monkey had stolen it from them.
In the court, the police said that the knife, which was the primary evidence, was also taken by the monkey. The cops informed that the evidence of the case was kept in a bag, which was being taken to the court.
The evidence bag contained the knife and 15 other important evidences. However, due to the lack of space in the malkhana, a bag full of evidence was kept under a tree, which led to the incident.