Chandigarh, February 28: Resenting the filing of a murder case against the Dera Sacha Sauda head by the CBI, the sect supporters today went on a rampage setting ablaze four trains and around 37 vehicles, including 27 buses, and vandalised property in several places in Punjab and Haryana.
Tension ran high in many towns in the two neighbouring states as police were put on high alert and Haryana requisitioned 1,500 para-military personnel to deal with the situation.
Patrolling was intensified in troubled-torn towns as Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Punjab’s Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal appealed for calm.
The protesters set afire a compartment each of the Ferozepur-Ludhiana Sutlej Express, the Narwana-Kurukshetra train and two local trains after asking the passengers to disembark, a railway spokesman said.
They also vandalised railway property at Tapa, Moga and Kalaiyat in Punjab, he said.
The mobs torched and damaged 37 vehilces, 27 of them buses, including an air-conditoned one, in Bathinda, Mansa, Talwandi Sabo, Bhagapurana and other places in Punjab and at Kaithal, Sirsa and Fatehabad in Haryana.
In Moga, the protesters tried to set ablaze the District Administration Complex, housing among others the offices of the Deputy Commissioner and the SSP, prompting police to fire in the air to scatter them.
Over 200 villagers, with some of them firing shots, attacked a police station at Bhagapurana. They fled after the reinforcement reached there from Moga.
A post office was set on fire at Talwandi Sabo in Bathinda by some persons who also forced closure of shops and commercial establishments at Mansa in Punjab.
A report from Fatehabad said two empty buses, parked in a workshop of the Haryana Roadways, and a bill collection centre of the power department were also set afire.
The demonstrators blocked traffic on the Ambala-Hissar highway at Kaithal and on the Hissar-Delhi road near Hansi by by squatting on the roads.
Some persons set on fire a Delhi-bound Haryana Roadways bus near Mirzapur village in Hissar district after asking the commuters to alight.
Dera’s chief spokesman Aditya Insaan said the sect followers were not behind the violence which erupted in Punjab and Haryana after the registration of the fresh case against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.
Last week, the CBI had booked Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh for the murder of sect Manager Faqir Chand in 1991.
Besides the sect head, four others were booked by the CBI in the case.
The sect head also faces three other cases including one of sexual exploitation and two of murder of another sect Manager and a Sirsa-based journalist.
–PTI