Friday, the vandal Muhammad Rizwan was presented in court for attacking Ranjit Singh’s statue present in the royal fort.
The court observed that the offence was bailable and permitted his bail with the surety of Rs50,000/-.
Rizwan was arrested on 14th of August by the Punjab Police after a video of him vandalising the statue went viral on social media.
India criticised Pakistan’s failure to contain hate crimes against minorities. Pakistan’s foreign office called India’s behaviour extremely hypocritical and asked for some introspection on their part. The entire world is witness to India’s state sponsored discrimination against its minorities.
Ranjit Singh’s statue has been vandalised for the third time in the last two years since it was installed. In 2019, two men attacked it with wooden sticks and in 2020 a man broke its arm.
It is an eight-foot-tall statue. It was built by the students at National college of Arts and Naqsh school of art under the supervision of Faqir Khana. Ranjit Singh was famous as Sher-e-Punjab. He was the first maharaja of the Sikh empire and ruled for almost 40 years.
