“Blessed to receive & pay obeisance to three holy Swaroop of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji”: Hardeep Singh Puri

As India evacuated hundreds of people, including Afghan Hindus and Sikhs, three copies of Guru Granth Sahib were also flown out of Kabul, where the situation has been chaotic with a number of people dying and making a desperate dash out of Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Union ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and V Muraleedharan received the copies of Guru Granth Sahib and 44 Afghan Sikhs who reached India from Kabul on a special Air India flight after a stopover in Tajikistan’s capital city of Dushanbe.

The three copies of Guru Granth Sahib will be taken to Guru Arjan Dev Ji Gurdwara in the Capital’s New Mahavir Nagar and the Afghan Sikhs will go to a hotel until further arrangements.

“Blessed to receive & pay obeisance to three holy Swaroop of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji from Kabul to Delhi a short while ago,” Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted along with a video showing him carrying a copy of the holy book.

Puri also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for carrying out rescue operations from Afghanistan and said the government is in touch with those in the country. The minister also said all the copies of Guru Granth Sahib have undergone the Covid-19 test.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader RP Singh and president of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management committee Manjinder Singh Sirsa were also present at the airport. “I request PM & HM to amend CAA and extend the cut-off date from 2014 to 2021 so that people coming from Afghanistan get benefitted & lead a safe life here and their children are able to study here,” Sirsa later said in a tweet.

“The Afghan Sikhs will stay at a hotel in Karol Bagh till further arrangements are made,” Kanv Bhalla, an entrepreneur coordinating rehabilitation efforts on behalf of New York-based philanthropist Mandeep Singh Sobti.