Fugitive Sikh separatist taunts Indian police in video

AMRITSAR: A firebrand fugitive Sikh separatist has posted a video taunting Indian authorities after a fruitless virtually two-week manhunt involving hundreds of police and web shutdowns.

Amritpal Singh has risen to fame in current months demanding the creation of Khalistan, a separate Sikh homeland, the battle for which sparked lethal violence within the Eighties and Nineties.

Punjab police have been searching Singh since March 18, slicing off cellular web within the Sikh-majority northern state of 30 million folks for days, arresting greater than 100 of his followers and banning gatherings of greater than 4 folks in locations.

After reported sightings in Delhi, within the video posted on social media on Wednesday, Singh known as the police operation an “assault on the Sikh group”.

India arrests 112 in manhunt for Sikh separatist

“I used to be neither afraid of arrest earlier, nor am I now. I’m in excessive spirits. No person may hurt me. It’s the grace of God,” he mentioned.

There was no unbiased verification of the video however there have been few doubts that it’s real.

The manhunt has sparked protests by Sikhs exterior Indian consulates in Britain, Canada and the USA, with demonstrators smashing home windows in San Francisco and reportedly vandalising a Gandhi statue in Ontario.

India has summoned high US, British and Canadian diplomats in New Delhi to complain and press for improved safety at Indian missions of their international locations.

Singh’s video was posted on Twitter accounts based mostly in Britain and Canada, which the social media firm took down in India following authorities requests, experiences mentioned.

Twitter has additionally blocked for Indian customers the accounts of a number of outstanding Sikh Canadians who criticised the crackdown, together with MP Jagmeet Singh, in addition to a number of journalists, in accordance with the experiences.

Punjab – which is about 58 p.c Sikh and 39 p.c Hindu – was rocked by a violent separatist motion for Khalistan within the Eighties and early Nineties wherein hundreds of individuals died.

India has usually complained to international governments in regards to the actions of Sikh hardliners among the many Indian diaspora who, it says, try to revive the insurgency with an enormous monetary push.