CHANDIGARH/DIBRUGARH: Police on Sunday performed flag marches and searches throughout Punjab of their manhunt for radical preacher Amritpal Singh, arresting 34 extra supporters and shifting 4 males in custody to a jail in far-off Assam. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has, nevertheless, requested the state authorities to reply on Tuesday to a habeas corpus petition, that claiming that the preacher is already in unlawful police custody and must be launched.
Justice N S (*34*) held the listening to at his home-office because the courts had been closed. Police caught to their model that the ‘Waris Punjab De’ chief gave them the slip throughout a automotive chase in Jalandhar district on Saturday, when the crackdown in opposition to the group started. They have slapped recent FIRs in opposition to the Khalistan sympathiser and his supporters.
Section 144 of the CrPc, which prohibits congregations, was imposed within the union territory of Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana. Prohibitory orders had been already in drive in some elements of Punjab.
Police recovered a second automobile within the case, an deserted pick-up with a gun, a sword and several other cartridges in Jalandhar district’s Salema village and mentioned it gave the impression to be part of Amritpal Singh’s cavalcade.
The crackdown has come weeks after Singh and his supporters barged into the Ajnala police station close to Amritsar, extracting an assurance that an arrested man could be launched.
Twenty-one Amritpal supporters had been taken into custody close to Boparai Kalan in Jalandhar district after they tried to stage a ‘dharna’ over the earlier days’ motion.
These detentions are apparently not a part of the arrests’ tally given by police 78 on Saturday and 34 extra on Sunday. Earlier, police mentioned 9 firearms have additionally been seized.
The state remained on excessive alert. Security forces took out flag marches at a number of locations together with Ferozepur, Bathinda, Rupnagar, Faridkot, Batala, Fazilka, Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur, Moga and Jalandhar in a present of power.
The Punjab authorities additionally prolonged the suspension of cellular web and SMS companies until Monday midday. The official order, which exempted banking companies, mentioned this was to ‘stop any incitement to violence and any disturbance of peace and public order’.
Four of the arrested males had been dropped at BJP-ruled Assam’s Dibrugarh by a 27-member Punjab Police workforce accompanying them, in response to an Assam Police officer.
The males, now lodged in Dibrugarh Central Jail, had been recognized as alleged fund raiser Daljit Singh Kalsi, Bhagwant Singh, Gurmeet Singh and ‘Pradhanmantri’ Bajeka.
“Sometimes, persons arrested in one state are sent to another state’s jail,” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma instructed reporters.
“We will provide them all security in the jail,” he mentioned.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had met Union Home Minister Amit Shah, quickly after the Ajnala episode. Days earlier, Amritpal Singh had additionally made a veiled menace to Shah.
Security has additionally been tightened at Amritpal’s native village Jallupur Khera in Amritsar, the place his father Tarsem Singh mentioned his son could have already been detained by police.
“He faces a threat to life,” the fugitive’s father mentioned. “There is no information since yesterday. We feel he has already been detained.”
Inspector General of Police Sukhchain Singh Gill mentioned Amritpal Singh continues to be absconding.
“Whatever the Punjab Police does in this case will be within the ambit of law. Everybody has a legal right and can avail whatever remedies are available under the law.”
He mentioned police have acted in a clear method and Amritpal Singh was seen escaping on the ‘naka’ laid for him in Mehatpur.
Jalandhar Police Commissioner Kuldeep Singh Chahal referred to as it a sport of ‘chor-sipahi’ (robbers and cops).
“Sometimes, they manage to escape. But we will soon arrest him,” he mentioned, sustaining that there was no lapse on Saturday.
The officer mentioned Singh’s automobile was chased for 20 to 25 kilometres. There had been slender streets and “somehow he managed to escape by changing his vehicle”.
He mentioned two of his autos have been seized up to now.
Police have now registered an FIR in opposition to Amritpal Singh and his supporters for breaking by means of a police checkpoint and one other associated to the restoration of a firearm within the automobile present in a Jalandhar village.
Amritsar Rural Senior Superintendent of Police Satinder Singh mentioned one other FIR was registered Saturday evening below the Arms Act after the arrest of seven of the preacher’s associates in that district.
Police warned that strict motion shall be taken in opposition to anybody spreading rumours, saying it was monitoring pretend information and hate speeches from totally different international locations, states and cities.
The crackdown follows the FIR registered a day after the storming of the Ajnala police station on February 23.
The preacher and his supporters had been accused of spreading disharmony, try and homicide, attacking police personnel and obstructing public servants in discharge of their duties.
Six police personnel, together with a superintendent of police, had been injured in Ajnala.
Opposition events had flagged the incident as an indication of the Aadm Aadmi Party authorities’s failure to keep up legislation and order and expressed fears that Punjab may slide again to the times of Khalistan militancy.
Dubai-returned Amritpal grew to become the top of ‘Waris Punjab De’, which was based by actor and activist Deep Sidhu who died in a street accident in February final yr.
