ICC Note:

A Christian woman in India northwest was murdered by unidentified assailants after being accused of desecrating the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. According to police, the Christian woman was hacked with a sickle below the knee and took four hours to bleed out. Religious intolerance in India has skyrocketed since 2014 with the rise of the Hindu nationalist BJP to India’s federal government. Christians have especially faced increasing persecution with 2015 being the worst year for attacks on Christians in India’s independent history. 

9/13/2016 India (Times of India) – A 55 year old Christian woman, allegedly accused of desecration of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, was hacked to death by some unidentified persons outside her house in Veroke village on Sunday night.

Senior superintendent of police, Amritsar, rural Harkamal Preet Singh Khakh told TOI on Monday that Balwinder Kaur was severely beaten by some unidentified persons with sharp edged weapons and died due to excessive bleeding.

At the time of incident, her husband Labh Masih, an alcoholic, was also present in the house but was hiding after hearing her help cries.

Kaur who got mentally retarded after getting an accidental electrical shock was booked under section 295A, 505 and 511 IPC in 2015 after she had entered in Gurdwara Babe di Ber Sahib wearing slippers and was currently on bail.

Khakh informed that police was also investigating on the theory that she could have been eliminated by some Sikh radical elements who wanted to revenge the sacrilege incident.

He informed that after the assailants left her severely injured and crying, she crawled nearly forty feet to reach the room where her granddaughter was sleeping who in turn tried to find and wake up Labh Singh but in vain. About four hours later she died of excessive bleeding.

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