GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 22

The man who was ‘beaten to death’ allegedly for attempting sacrilege at the Golden Temple on December 18 evening was cremated after the post mortem was conducted at the Civil Hospital dead house here on Wednesday.

Nonetheless, the DNA of the accused was preserved so that if anyone from the deceased’s family approaches, the genetic instructions could be matched. Similarly, the viscera has been collected which would be sent to the Kharar forensic lab.

The hospital management had constituted a five-member doctors’ board which conducted the autopsy, the report of which would be sent to Government Medical College, Amritsar and Kharar lab for further investigation. The whole process was videographed.

With no claimant of the body emerged within 72 hours and the biometric technique failed to provide any lead to the police, mystery still shrouds about the identity of the accused.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was entrusted the task to identify the accused has so far could not succeed to establish the whereabouts of the accused, despite the lapse of two days as assured by the Deputy CM Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa on December 19.

The accused never carried any ID proof, mobile phone or any relevant document that could establish his identity. The biometric methodology too failed to yield result as the finger prints never matched the Aadhaar Card database and police records.

SIT Head DCP (law and order) Parminder Singh Bhandal had stated that the police teams were on the job to locate the movement of the accused who was present in and around the Golden Temple, a day prior to committing sacrilege.

The CCTV footage procured from the shrine and the markets around it, apart from the Inter-State Bus Terminus and Railway Station, were being scrutinised minutely. He had entered the shrine complex multiple times.