Ranjit Singh’s statue attacker gets bail
This is the third time it was vandalised
The court has approved the bail of Muhammad Rizwan accused of vandalising the statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh at the Lahore Fort.
The accused was produced in Lahore District Court on Friday (August 20). Duty Judicial Magistrate Hasan Sarfaraz Cheema heard the request of the accused of judicial remand.
The court remarked that the charges against the accused were bailable.
The prosecution said that the accused Muhammad Rizwan had broken the statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh installed in the royal fort. The challan of the accused will be presented in court soon.
The prosecution requested the court to send him to jail on judicial remand.
However, the court granted bail for a surety of Rs50,000.
On August 14, the Punjab police arrested a man Muhammad Rizwan for damaging the statue. Historian Ali Usman Qasmi shared a video of the vandalism and claimed that it was done by a member of the banned Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan.
After a video of the attack started circulating on social media, India’s Ministry of External Affairs released a statement. “Pakistani state has completely failed in its duty to prevent such attacks. This is creating a climate of fear for the minority communities to practice their faith,” it stated.
Responding to the remarks, the Foreign Office said: “It is highly hypocritical of a country that is purveyor of state-sponsored discrimination against its minorities to pontificate on the issue of minority rights elsewhere.”
A mature state would have concentrated on the immediate action taken against the perpetrator.
“Rather than feigning concern for minorities elsewhere, India should seriously introspect, move away from entrenched anti-minority mindset being destructively spawned by the RSS-BJP regime, and discard state-sponsored discriminatory policies,” the spokesperson said.
He added that the government, legislature, judiciary, civil society, and media in Pakistan have always worked for ensuring constitutional protections for members of minorities as equal citizens.
The statue
This is the third time the statue has been vandalised since it was unveiled two years ago. In December 2020, a young man had broken the arm of the Maharaja’s statue, while two men had attacked with it wooden sticks in August 2019.
The sculpture was installed at the Lahore Fort’s historic Mai Jindan Haveli to mark the 180th anniversary of the former ruler’s death on June 28, 2019. The haveli has been named after Ranjit Singh’s youngest queen and holds features a permanent exhibition of artifacts belonging to the Maharaja.
The government had taken eight months to finish the eight-foot-tall statue of the king sitting on his favourite horse named Kahar Bahar, a gift from Dost Muhammad Khan, the founder of the Barakzai dynasty.
The statue was built and installed by the Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) in collaboration with the UK-based Sikh Heritage Foundation, which funded the project.
According to Time Now News, the statue was made by artists from Lahore’s National College of Art and Naqsh School of Art under the supervision of Faqir Khana Museum Director Faqir Saifuddin.
Known as Sher-e-Punjab or Lion of Punjab, Singh was the first Maharaja of the Sikh Empire who ruled over Punjab for close to 40 years. He died in 1839.
