His hunt had reacted as far as the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States: after a month on the run, the Sikh separatist preacher Amritpal Singh was arrested on Sunday in the state of Punjab, in the north-west of the India.
Authorities have been on his trail since the 30-year-old Sikh leader and his followers, armed with swords, knives and guns, stormed a police station in February after the arrest of a aides to Mr. Singh for alleged assault and attempted kidnapping.
The attack in broad daylight in the suburbs of Amritsar, a city in Punjab which houses the holiest of Sikh temples, the Golden Temple, left several police officers injured.
At the end of a long run which mobilized thousands of police officers for several weeks, Mr. Singh was arrested in a temple on Sunday at 06:45 local time (01:15 GMT) in a village in Punjab.
“Once he realized he had no escape and was surrounded, he was arrested,” local police chief Sukhchain Singh Gill told reporters.
Amritpal Singh has made a name for himself in recent months by preaching radical Sikhism, going so far as to demand the creation of a Sikh state called Khalistan to secede from India, a country with a Hindu majority.
His idol: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, radical leader and symbol of the Khalistan movement, killed in 1984 after the Indian army assault on separatists at the Golden Temple, which left at least 400 dead.
The ex-fugitive sports a blue turban similar to the one worn by Bhindranwale and even reportedly underwent surgery in Georgia last year to look even more like his hero.
After the attack on the police station near Amristar, the authorities had deployed significant resources to try to arrest the preacher, who had notably escaped them during a spectacular escape on a motorcycle.
During the hunt, more than 100 of his supporters were arrested and the authorities went so far as to cut off mobile internet access throughout Punjab, which has 30 million inhabitants, 58% of whom are sikhs.
That didn’t stop the preacher from taunting authorities in a video posted to social media in late March, where he called the police operation an “attack on the Sikh community.” be arrested and I’m not today,” he said.
The video was posted by Twitter accounts based in Britain and Canada and was, according to news reports, taken down in India at the request of the government.
The social network would also have blocked the access of Indian users to the accounts of figures of the Sikh community in Canada who had criticized the hunt launched by the authorities.
This manhunt had also prompted sympathizers of the preacher to demonstrate in front of the Indian consulates in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, mobilizations sometimes enamelled with acts of vandalism.
In San Francisco, protesters smashed windows; in London, an Indian flag was torn from the embassy, ??and in the Canadian province of Ontario, a statue of Gandhi was ransacked.
India has summoned US, British and Canadian diplomatic representatives to New Delhi to protest and demand security for Indian missions in those countries.
India has often complained about the activity of the Sikh diaspora abroad, likely according to New Delhi to revive the separatist movement thanks to massive financial aid.
“Some people have tried to harm peace and brotherhood in Punjab, on behalf of enemies of the country”, reacted after the arrest the chief minister of the state, Bhagwant Mann, in a video released on Sunday .
“I want the youth of Punjab to get the best degrees and win medals in national and international events rather than serving some selfish and anti-national elements,” he added.
The state of Punjab experienced violent separatist movements in favor of Khalistan in the 1980s and early 1990s, which claimed thousands of lives.
23/04/2023 12:57:30 – Amritsar (Inde) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
