With 3rd bill in 9 years, Punjab renews push for tougher sacrilege law. What’s different this time

A Sikh priest carries the Guru Granth Sahib, holy book of the Sikhs, on his head during a religious procession at the Golden Temple in Amritsar | Photo: ANI

Chandigarh: The Punjab assembly Tuesday unanimously decided to refer the Punjab Prevention of Offences Against Holy Scriptures Bill, 2025, to a select committee of MLAs. This committee will seek suggestions from all stakeholders, including the public, regarding its provisions.

The bill proposes harsher punishments for those involved in the sacrilege of holy scriptures, including the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs, considered to be a living guru.

Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan said the committee should conclude the consultative process within 6 months.

This is the third time in the past 9 years that the Punjab government has sought to bring in legislation to stiffen the laws relating to sacrilege.

The state’s earlier proposals sought to amend the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to provide for graver criminal punishments, while the bill introduced in the assembly Monday seeks to bring in a new self-contained Act on the matter.

The subject of criminal law is on the concurrent list of the seventh schedule of the Constitution, on which both Parliament and state legislatures can enact laws. However, in case a state bill is in conflict with “or repugnant to” a central law on the same issue, it requires the assent of the President.

The earlier proposals of the Punjab government targeting sacrilege were returned by the Centre after they were referred to the President for assent. While on one occasion the proposed changes were found “excessive in law”, on the other, the Centre refrained from taking a decision on the “tricky affair”.

Speaking to PTI Monday evening after introducing the anti-sacrilege bill in the assembly, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said that if enacted, it would be the first-of-its-kind Act in the country.

After the bill was passed by the cabinet, a spokesperson from the Chief Minister’s Office said in a statement there have been numerous incidents involving the sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and other revered granths, deeply wounding public sentiment and causing unrest in society.

He stated that while Sections 298, 299 and 300 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, that replaced the IPC last year, address such issues, they do not prescribe sufficiently stringent penalties to serve as an effective deterrent. Considering the gravity of such offences and the imperative to preserve communal harmony and religious sanctity, the Punjab cabinet found it necessary to introduce state-specific legislation providing enhanced penalties—including life imprisonment—for those convicted of sacrilege against any holy book.

Speaker Sandhwan before beginning proceedings of the House stood up to say special prayers Monday when the bill was introduced, and Tuesday when it was discussed. He prayed that the bill should see the light of day for the “protection of the glory and dignity of religion”.

According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Punjab in 2021 clocked 189 cases of sacrilege, the highest in India. In 2022, the number went up to over 200, again the highest in the country.

Old and new punishments

Till last year, for all incidents of sacrilege, the police invoked Sections 295 and 295A of the IPC, dealing with offences related to religious sentiments. After the IPC was replaced by the BNS, all incidents of sacrilege are covered under Sections 298 and 299.

Section 298 provides imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years, or fine, or both, for any person who “destroys, damages or defiles any place of worship or any object held sacred by any class of persons” with the intention of thereby insulting their religion.

Section 299 provides for imprisonment up to three years or fine, or both, for any person who “with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India insults or attempts to insult the religion or religious beliefs”. Section 298 replicates Section 295 of the IPC, while Section 299 replicates section 295A of the IPC.

Punjab’s new bill proposes a minimum sentence of 10 years of imprisonment extendable up to life, besides a fine of Rs 5 lakh extendable up to Rs 10 lakh for sacrilege of “holy” scriptures. Holy scriptures have been defined to include the Guru Granth Sahib or extracts thereof, including “Pothis” and “Gutka Sahibs”, the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran and the Bible.

The bill defines the term offence to mean and include “any sacrilege, damage, destruction, defacing, disfiguring, decolouring, defiling, decomposing, burning, breaking or tearing of any holy scriptures or part thereof”.

Offences under the bill will be cognisable, non-bailable, non-compoundable and triable by the sessions court. Investigation of offences will be conducted by a police officer not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police. Any “attempt” (distinguished from a completed offence) to commit an offence will be punished with a minimum of three years in jail, extendable to five years and with a fine up to Rs 3 lakh.

In Pakistan—which also follows penal provisions enacted by the British colonial government in 1860—Section 295 of the nation’s penal code, like the IPC provision, leads to 2 years in jail. Section 295A, however, invites 10 years of imprisonment over deliberate and malicious intention to outrage religious feelings.

The Pakistan government further added the stringent Section 295B to protect the Quran in 1982. The punishment for defiling it is imprisonment for life. Then, in 1986, it added Section 295C, which carries a mandatory death sentence for derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed or other prophets.

2015 sacrilege trigger

Punjab’s move to bring in stricter legislation was triggered by a series of incidents of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib in 2015.

A bir (form) of the holy book was stolen from a village gurdwara in Faridkot in June that year. A few months later, pages believed to have been torn from it were found strewn in a nearby village. These incidents were followed by multiple incidents of sacrilege of various Sikh texts, as well as the Quran and Bhagavad Gita.

Facing severe backlash in handling of the sacrilege cases, in March 2016 the then Akali Dal-BJP government passed a bill in the assembly to amend the IPC. The amendment sought to add Section 295AA, which provided for life imprisonment for sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib. It also sought enhancement of punishment under Section 295 of the IPC from two years to 10 years.

The SAD-BJP government drew a distinction between the Guru Granth Sahib, considered a living guru by the Sikhs, and scriptures of other religions which were to be covered under Section 295 with an enhanced punishment.

Another related bill was passed to amend the first schedule of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973. The Governor gave his assent to the two bills on 28 April, 2016, and they were sent for presidential assent as they involved amendments to central Acts.

The Union home ministry, however, returned the Indian Penal Code (Punjab Amendment) Bill to the Punjab government following legal opinion that the proposed law would violate the principle of secularism and the sentence (life imprisonment) prescribed was “excessive in law”.

In 2018, when Captain Amarinder Singh was CM, his government withdrew the 2016 bills and a fresh amendment proposal was passed by the assembly, this time to include holy books of all religions, to tide over the objection raised by the home ministry.

The amended Section 295AA read: “Whoever causes injury, damage or sacrilege to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran and the Bible with the intention to hurt the religious feelings of the people, shall be punished with imprisonment for life”. Another bill to amend the CrPC accordingly was also passed.

But these bills too were never enacted. In December 2021, then deputy chief minister of Punjab, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, wrote to the home ministry to clear the bills but the Centre chose not to take a decision on them. Sources at the time told ThePrint that the central government saw it as a tricky affair, that would amount to opening the proverbial pandora’s box across states which might differ in their definition of “sacrilege”. The bills were returned by the Centre after the BNS replaced the IPC last year.

Speaking Tuesday during the discussion on the latest bill, this time enacted by the Aam Aadmi Party-led government in Punjab, education minister Harjot Singh Bains said Punjab was fully competent to bring about an Act for the state.

“The subject matter is in the concurrent list. States like UP, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra have enacted their own criminal laws on various issues. The earlier government was taking people for a ride by trying to bring about amendments in the IPC. What was needed then is a state Act which we are bringing now,” he said.

Views of Punjab legislators, SGPC

The latest version of the anti-sacrilege bill was unanimously welcomed by legislators but elicited a variety of responses.

Speaking in the assembly, leader of the opposition Partap Singh Bajwa said that the Guru Granth Sahib had been equated with other holy scriptures and that was wrong. “A living guru cannot be the same as a scripture. Also, the theft of a scripture has not been added as an offence in the law,” he added.

Bajwa further said that investigation in the sacrilege cases should be time-bound, limited to one month at the level of DSP and the period increased only after clearance from senior officers. “If the investigation is needed for a longer period, it should be allowed only after permission from senior officers,” he asserted.

Independent MLA Rana Inder Pratap Singh also said the “Guru Grath Sahib is not a sacred book but a juristic person as laid down by the Supreme Court and cannot be equated with other sacred books”. He added that attempt to commit sacrilege should also be awarded with life imprisonment.

Congress MLA Avtar Singh Junior said that several changes had been brought in the bill that had widened its scope.

“I suggest we have a religious harmony council which should consider the bill,” he asserted, adding that the bill provided for unbridled powers to the police which could be misused for political vendetta. “The investigations should be held in strict scrutiny of a judicial commission and there should be an end to the probe in 2 years,” he said.

On Wednesday, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president advocate Harjinder Singh Dhami welcomed the bill but stressed that the government must approach the matter with seriousness.

Speaking to the media, he pointed out that this was not the first time that such a law was being discussed and the matter should be taken forward in the spirit of respecting sentiments.

He added that most incidents of sacrilege in Punjab were related to the Guru Granth Sahib, and the proposed law’s language merely referring to “holy scriptures” was inadequate and hurts Sikh sentiments.

According to him, while scriptures of all faiths were to be respected, the Guru Granth Sahib was accorded the status of eternal guru by the 10th Sikh Guru Gobind Singh himself. For Sikhs thus, any law made in this regard must contain provisions keeping their sentiments in mind.

Former Minister of State and senior BJP leader Vijay Sampla alleged in a statement to the media that the AAP government had shown its “anti-Dalit mindset” by not including provisions for punishment over disrespect towards the idols and holy scriptures of Sri Guru Ravidass (Amritbani), Bhagwan Valmiki, Sant Kabir and Sant Nabhadas in the bill.

Sacrilege an emotive issue

Sacrilege, especially of the Guru Granth Sahib, has become an emotive political issue in Punjab over the past 10 years.

The Congress and AAP made it their main poll plank in the 2017 assembly elections that led to crushing defeat of the SAD-BJP government. After the Congress came to power in the state, it held multiple investigations into the 2015 incidents of sacrilege, laying blame at the doors of the Badals during whose reign the incidents had taken place.

The AAP too, alleging that the Congress had not been able to give justice in the matter in five years of its rule, made sacrilege a dominant election issue in 2022.

On Wednesday, Bajwa told the assembly that the AAP had failed to nab the culprits in the sacrilege cases.

“Why haven’t names of the then CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son, then home minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, not been added to a chargesheet issued by the state police in a case related to police firing on innocent Sikhs protesting against sacrilege incidents in 2015?” he asked.

He said the AAP was as responsible for the accused going scot-free as anyone else. “The same bill had been passed by the Congress in 2018 but no effort was made by the AAP government to follow it up with the Centre. The CM should have met the PM over the matter,” he added.

SAD MLA Manpreet Singh Ayali said enough politics had been done in the matter.

For some years now, Punjab has topped the country in the number of sacrilege cases. NCRB data shows that from 2018 to 2020, Punjab’s rate of crimes (number of cases divided by population in lakhs) registered under Sections 295 to 297 of the IPC, which deal with sacrilege, was the highest.

In 2018, the sacrilege crime rate in the state was 0.7 percent, while in other states this ranged between 0.1 and 0.4 percent. The figure for Punjab was 0.6 percent in 2019 and 0.5 percent in 2020.

In 2017, when the NCRB first started giving data about these crimes, Goa registered the highest rate at 0.8 percent, and Punjab was second highest at 0.6 percent. The total number of such cases registered in Punjab from 2017 to 2020 was 721.

While the new leadership in Punjab has refused to make public the latest data on the total number of sacrilege cases registered and the status of their investigation, it is widely alleged that in most such cases, the culprit is not punished in accordance with the law but let off on grounds of “insanity”.

Referring to the insanity plea in the assembly Tuesday, CM Mann said it was the easiest way for criminals to get away with the worst kind of sacrilege. “For us, a guru is a father. If the father is not safe in our house, where else will he be safe?” he asked.

‘Beadbi’ in Sikhism

The concept of beadbi or sacrilege in Sikhism emanates largely from the fact that Sikhs consider the Guru Granth Sahib to be a living Guru.

“This is how it was ordained by the 10th Guru, Guru Gobind Singh. The Guru Granth Sahib and everything associated with it is sacred. Since the Guru is considered to be a living being, any harm or disrespect to it is a serious offence for the Sikhs,” Professor Dharam Singh, an eminent Sikh scholar, told ThePrint.

The gurdwara, which literally means the abode of the guru, and the articles used in the service of the guru are also considered sacred. So are the dastaar or pagri, the headgear worn by Sikhs, and the kirpaan, the sword that baptised Sikhs carry.

The hair and beard maintained by Sikhs are also seen as sacred, and touching or disrespecting these amounts to sacrilege.

“An alteration of Sikh religious traditions and practices, or a distortion of the history of the gurus is also sacrilege,” Singh added.

Operation Blue Star, in which the Army entered the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh shrines, in 1984 to flush out Sikh militants, is considered the biggest incident of beadbi in modern Sikh history.

“Indira Gandhi (who ordered the Army to enter the Golden Temple) paid a price for it with her life. Men in uniform, whether from the army or the police, have not been allowed to enter the gurdwara in uniform ever since,” said Singh.

In 2007, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, head of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, donned attire like that of Guru Gobind Singh, which led to violent clashes between Sikhs and Dera followers. The Dera chief was booked for sacrilege and excommunicated by the Akal Takht, which also instructed all Sikhs not to have any dealings with Dera followers. The enmity between Dera followers and Sikhs continues till date.

(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)