Around seven months in the past, a grand ceremony was held in Rode village in Punjab’s Moga district to anoint radical preacher Amritpal Singh as the pinnacle of “Waris Punjab De”, an organisation based by actor-activist Deep Sidhu who died in a highway accident in February final 12 months. Rode, the place chosen for the “dastarbandi” (turban-tying) occasion on September 29, 2022, occurs to be the ancestral village of slain militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. On Sunday morning, Amritpal Singh, the 29-year-old Khalistan sympathiser, was arrested from the identical place greater than a month after the Punjab Police launched a crackdown in opposition to him following the storming of the Ajnala police station by his supporters to safe the discharge of an arrested affiliate.
Police mentioned Amritpal was arrested from Rode and despatched to a jail in Assam’s Dibrugarh, whereas countering sure claims, together with of the novel preacher that he had surrendered. The claims surfaced in a video purportedly shot inside a Gurdwara in Rode. “In the court of the almighty, I am not guilty, but I could be guilty in the worldly court,” Amritpal is heard saying within the video. Police mentioned they didn’t enter the gurdwara to keep up the sanctity of the place, however conveyed the message to Amritpal that he was surrounded and there was no probability of an escape. Another video of Amritpal surfaced on Sunday, through which he may very well be seen bowing earlier than a big image of Bhindranwale.
The radical preacher used to decorate up like Bhindranwale, carrying a protracted white gown and sometimes donning a blue turban and a kirpan, and provides fiery speeches. In February, Amritpal and his supporters, a few of them brandishing swords and weapons, broke by way of barricades and barged into the Ajnala police station on the outskirts of Amritsar metropolis, and clashed with police for the discharge of considered one of his aides. A number of policemen had been injured within the conflict. Ever for the reason that Ajnala incident, Amritpal had stored the safety companies on their toes. He had been on the run since March 18 when a police crackdown was launched in opposition to him and the members of his “Waris Punjab De” outfit. The Punjab Police had invoked the stringent National Security Act (NSA) in opposition to the Khalistan sympathiser. Before Amritpal’s arrest, police had arrested his key aides Papalpreet Singh and Joga Singh. Dubai-returned Amritpal earlier labored in his family-owned transport enterprise. He was made the pinnacle of the organisation that Sidhu had shaped to “protect the rights of Punjab and raise social issues”.
Amritpal, who claimed to be a follower of Bhindranwale, hailed from Jallupur Khera village in Amritsar. Like Bhindranwale, he used to maneuver round with armed males. Some of his supporters name him “Bhindranwale 2.0”. Before the police crackdown, Amritpal had been shifting throughout Punjab, after he launched the “Khalsa Vaheer”, a standard type of spiritual procession that he mentioned was geared toward bringing children nearer to Sikhism. Its different goal was to unfold consciousness amongst children in opposition to drug abuse, Amritpal had mentioned. In February, Amritpal tied the knot with UK-based Kirandeep Kaur in a easy ceremony at Jallupur Khera, his native village. Amritpal had earlier escaped the police dragnet twice — first on March 18 in Jalandhar district by switching autos after which once more on March 28 in Hoshiarpur, when he returned to Punjab alongside together with his key affiliate Papalpreet Singh. Amritpal, who used to journey in high-end Mercedes vehicles, had switched to an Isuzu pick-up truck, then to a Brezza SUV, earlier than driving pillion on a bike and later, utilizing a motorised cart to flee the police dragnet.
While on the run, two movies and an audio clip of the preacher had surfaced on social media platforms. In a kind of clips, he had urged the Akal Takht “jathedar” to convene a “Sarbat Khalsa” to debate the problems associated to Sikhs and requested the members of the group to take part in it in massive numbers. According to an affidavit of Senior Superintendent of Police, Amritsar Rural, Satinder Singh, which was filed within the Punjab and Haryana High Court right here in March, Amritpal was actively “abetting, provoking, motivating, conspiring” to wage conflict in opposition to the State for a separate nation by the title of “Khalistan” and “acting in a manner prejudicial to the security of the State and maintenance of public order”.
