The rise of Singh, a preacher in the northwestern state of Punjab where Sikhs are in the majority, has revived talk of an independent Sikh homeland and stoked fears of a return to the violence that killed tens of thousands of people in the 1980s and early 1990s. Sikh rebellion.
“Amritpal Singh was arrested from Rood village in Muga district of Punjab based on specific intelligence,” Suchin Singh Gill, a senior Punjab police official, told reporters.
The arrest of Amritpal Singh, 30, who leads a group called Waris Punjab De (Inheritors of Punjab), comes after the self-appointed preacher and hundreds of his supporters stormed a police station with swords and firearms, demanding his release. one of his assistants.
Police charged Singh and his supporters with attempted murder, obstructing law enforcement and creating disharmony, and said he had been on the run since mid-March.
He was arrested in the village of Gurudwara, a Sikh temple, the police official said, under the National Security Act, which allows those deemed a threat to national security to be held without charge for up to a year.
Gill said he will be transferred to Dibrugarh, in Assam, where some of his accomplices are already in jail.
AOQ