NEW DELHI: Indian police on Sunday arrested Sikh leader Amritpal Singh, weeks after launching a massive crackdown on his supporters.
He was arrested from Punjab state’s Moga district, about 100 kilometres from the regional capital Chandigarh.
The police have invoked provisions of the stringent National Security Act (NSA) against Amritpal, who faces charges of attempted murder, obstruction of law enforcement and creating communal disharmony.
Warrants under NSA were issued against him and these were executed in the morning, Punjab police chief Sukhchain Singh Gill told the media on Sunday.
“Further law will take its own course in this case,” he said.
Amritpal, aged 30, who heads the Waris Punjab De (Heirs of Punjab) organisation, will be transferred to a jail in Dibrugarh, some 2,600km away in the northeastern state of Assam, local media reported.
Amritpal came to prominence recently with his statements seen as supporting separatism and radicalism in the Sikh-majority region of India.
In a video circulating on social media, the Waris Punjab De chief is seen addressing a congregation in a gurdwara before his arrest.
A large number of his supporters were arrested in the crackdown launched on March 18, but many were released later.
The police action and intense media coverage surrounding the case had drawn the ire of the Akal Takht, the supreme Sikth authority.
“In the memory of Punjab, there are deep wounds of oppression of the past governments and no government has ever been seriously taking corrective measures,” its chief Giani Harpreet Singh said in March.
Punjab suffered militancy and a security crackdown in the 1980s and early 1990s. — BERNAMA-PA Media/dpa
