Chandigarh: Hours after a third low-intensity explosion shook the area around Amritsar’s Golden Temple — considered the most important shrine of Sikhism — the Punjab Police said they arrested five people with assistance from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC)’s “task force”.
Addressing a press conference Thursday, Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav said that the main suspects — identified as Azaadveer Singh, a 30-year-old resident of Amritsar’s Baba Bakala tehsil and Amrik Singh, a 26-year-old resident of Gurdaspur — were arrested from the Guru Ramdas Sarai, a lodging facility for pilgrims inside the complex of the Golden Temple.
Three others — Sahib Singh alias Saba, Dharminder Singh and Harjeet Singh, all residents of Amritsar — who were responsible for sourcing explosives have also been arrested, the police said.
Although Yadav said the suspects’ motives are still unclear, highly placed sources in the police told ThePrint that they had admitted to carrying out the explosions as an act of protest against the invocation of the National Security Act (NSA) against arrested Sikh radical Amritpal Singh and his associates.
The arrests came within hours of a third blast in five days. That explosion took place Wednesday midnight in a park behind the sarai — a site that’s around 2 km from the spot of the first two blasts on Heritage Street, a busy road that leads up to the Golden Temple.
No one was injured in Wednesday’s incident.
The suspects arrested from the sarai had been staying there for several days, Yadav said, adding that police teams had found over 1 kg of the crude explosives in their possession.
“All of them are highly radicalised Sikhs but it remains to be seen whether they were self-motivated or part of a larger radical group. The motive of the blasts and why the accused chose the Golden Temple to carry them out is under investigation,” Yadav said. He was accompanied by Amritsar Police Commissioner Naunihal Singh during the press conference, and appreciated the role played by the SGPC in making the arrests.
The SGPC, meanwhile, blamed the Aam Aadmi Party government for the third explosion. Addressing a press conference earlier in the day, SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami said it was the government’s “failure” to solve the first two incidents that led to the third blast.
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‘Explosives assembled in the bathroom’
According to Yadav, the prime suspect, Azaadveer, was a history sheeter whose other cases police were now identifying.
While not much else is known about the others, Lakhvinder Singh, a resident of Adil village in Gurdaspur, told the media that he had known the other suspect, Amrik, for several years and that he had begun using drugs a few years ago.
Sources in the police also confirmed to ThePrint that small quantities of drugs had been found in Amrik’s baggage recovered at the Golden Temple.
During the police press conference, Yadav said that the suspects used sarai’s bathroom to assemble the low intensity bombs using explosives normally used in firecrackers.
He added that Amrik Singh’s wife, who was also living in the sarai with them, was also taken into custody, although the role she played “is still under investigation”.
The other three, he said, were primarily responsible for supplying the explosives.
“Sahib Singh has a licence for selling firecrackers in Aligarh (Uttar Pradesh) and he diverted the explosive from firecrackers, handing it to Harjeet, who then gave it to Dharminder, who gave it to Azaadveer. The explosive is a mixture of chloride, bromide and sulphur,” Yadav said, adding that the first two blasts — one on the night of 6 May and another in the early morning of 8 May were also carried out by this group.
“Apart from details gathered during preliminary interrogation of the accused, evidence of their being involved in the earlier blasts has been recovered from the mobile phones of the accused. The phones contain pictures and videos of them assembling the bombs,” said Yadav.
For the first blast, two cans of an energy drink and a metallic tiffin box allegedly were packed with explosives and put in a polythene bag on the roof of the Saragarhi car parking on Heritage Street. A rope was hung from this which, when pulled, allegedly caused the blast.
“The second blast took place when the accused placed two bowls full of the explosive one on top of the other and put these on the parking lot roof at around 4.30 am on 8 May, blasting it at around 6.15 am,” Yadav said.
The Amritsar Police had set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to carry out further investigations, he said, adding that the probe will be “dispassionate and scientific.”
Papers at the blast site
Addressing a press conference earlier in the day, SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami said that a loud explosion was heard at 10 minutes past midnight Wednesday, followed by smoke billowing out from behind the Guru Ramdas Sarai.
SGPC staff and police immediately reached the spot to investigate, he said.
“After the third blast our technical teams managing their CCTV cameras worked through the night and identified the main accused who after having carried out the blast came back into the sarai to sleep in the verandah. He was apprehended by our staff and handed over to the police in the morning,” Dhami said, adding that the task force had found some papers near the site of the third blast which were handed over to the police along with the suspect’s baggage.
Dhami also said that the SGPC will step up security at the Golden Temple and were considering installing baggage scanners at the complex.
When asked about the papers allegedly found at the blast site, Yadav said they were still under investigation. But police sources told ThePrint that before each blast, suspects threw some papers citing their reasons for them but these papers had gone unnoticed until Wednesday.
Meanwhile, in a video message he issued Wednesday, Giani Harpreet Singh, the jathedar of the Akal Takht — the highest temporal seat of Sikhism — has appealed for peace.
Hinting at a possible conspiracy around the Golden Temple, he claimed while suspects had been arrested, it was imperative for the police to look beyond their immediate motives to “expose” such designs, adding that the explosions could be a result of “hate and polarisation” politics.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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