Amidst a crackdown on pro-Khalistan ‘Waris Punjab De’ chief Amritpal Singh, four of his arrested aides have been moved to Dibrugarh in Assam on Sunday, March 19.
Reportedly, the case of Amritpal Singh’s aides would be handled by Assam’s top police official.
Four detained associates of Khalistani preacher Amritpal Singh were flown to Dibrugarh by a Special Air Force aircraft. The arrested persons will most likely be imprisoned in the Dibrugarh Central Jail. They were accompanied by a 27-member Punjab Police team, including the IG Prison.
At Mohanbari Airport, they were received by Dibrugarh’s Deputy Commissioner (DC) and Superintendent of Police (SP) amid tight security. The four arrested Waris Punjab De members were shifted to the bus at the runway of the airport itself, and a large team of Assam police escorted them to the jail. They were lodged in prison after medical tests.
Talking to reporters in Dibrugarh, Tejbir Singh Hundal of Punjab Police, the SP Investigation in Hoshiarpur, said that four persons have been shifted to Assam. He refused to divulge the names of the persons when asked, saying it will be disclosed later. He confirmed that the arrested persons will be kept at Dibrugarh Central Jail.
Security has been tightened at the jail, and additional Assam police forces have been deployed apart from the regular jail guards.
It is notable that just 2 days ago, senior officials of Assam Police visited the Dibrugarh Central Jail. Before the official confirmation, local media was reporting increased security activities at the Dibrugarh airport and around the jail. According to the speculations by media, all arrested members of Waris Punjab De will be shifted out of Punjab, as Punjab will see massive protests against the arrests, and there could be law and order situations, given how the organisation had seized a police station to release one of the arrested members.
Notably, Jalandhar Commissioner Kuldeep Singh Chahal on Saturday late evening confirmed that the radical leader has been declared a “fugitive”.
“Waris Punjab De chief Amritpal Singh has been declared a fugitive. His two cars were seized and gunmen nabbed. We also checked if the firearms of his security escorts had been procured legally. A case has been registered. Punjab Police have launched a manhunt for Amritpal Singh and we are hopeful that he will be arrested soon. A total of 78 people have been arrested so far and further searches and raids are underway,” Chahal said in an exclusive interview with ANI.
Amritpal’s rise in Punjab
Amritpal Singh was a supporter of Deep Sidhu and actively participated in online campaigns and scissions with the pro-Khalistani late actor-turned-activist Sidhu who had founded Waris Punjab De in 2021. After Sidhu died in a road accident, Amritpal Singh took over the organisation. At that time, he was in Dubai. He returned to India in September 2022 and officially took charge of the organisation. Since then, his rise has been seen in a similar timeline to the rise of Khalistani terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in the late 1980s.