This year newspapers in Punjab carried an advertisement depicting Gurmeet Singh, the leader of a religious sect, the Dera Sacha Sauda, alike the revered Sikh Guru Gobind Singh.
The resulting sectarian violence cost at least one life, injured many, ruined many businesses.
After almost a month of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between the sect's followers and Sikhs, an apology was issued. By then the damage had already been done for the Sacha Sauda. Murder and rape charges were flung at Gurmeet Singh and cases were filed.
The resulting muckraking exposed him as a man living well beyond his means. It turned out that the leader of an organisation that is against donations of any kind liked to move around town in a fleet of Mercedes cars with a posse of bodyguards.
That single ad hastened the fall of a man powerful enough in his own little fiefdom.
Image: Sikhs protesting against the chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda. Inset: Gurmeet Singh
Photograph: Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: Dera Sacha Sauda issues apology
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