Chandigarh: Six days after the Punjab Police launched a major crackdown against the controversial radical activist Amritpal Singh and his associates, evidence has emerged indicating his alleged involvement in providing weapons training to his followers at a makeshift firing range near a rivulet at his residential village in Jallupur Khera in Amritsar, police said.
Amritpal, who heads a faction of the social organisation Waris Punjab De, is on the run. He is wanted under the National Security Act (NSA) for activities “prejudicial to the security of India and the maintenance of public order”.
Addressing a press conference, inspector general (IG) headquarters Sukhchain Singh Gill said Thursday that videos and photographs of the firing range and Amritpal’s men learning to dismantle and put together weapons have been recovered from the mobile phone of his close associate Tejinder Singh Gill, alias Gorkha Baba, who was arrested by the Khanna city police Wednesday.
Gill said that other incriminating evidence of a “more serious nature that clearly points to Amritpal being involved in anti-national activities has also been recovered from the mobile phone, details of which cannot be shared at this stage”.
He added that “holograms and logos of AKF or Anandpur Khalsa Fauj which Amritpal is suspected to be raising have also been found on the phone”. Gill also said that it seems so far that the AKF membership was limited to a close group of persons with Amritpal who had weapons.
According to the IG, eight FIRs have been lodged against Amritpal, with the latest registered against him and Tejinder Singh Gill at Malod police station in Khanna Wednesday.
Regarding Amritpal’s whereabouts, Gill said that he along with associate Papalpreet Singh had crossed out of Punjab and were last seen in Kurukshetra in Haryana.
Amritpal and Papalpreet managed to reach Kurukshetra on March 19 and stayed the night at the residence of Papalpreet’s woman friend Baljit Kaur, Gill told the media. He added that Baljit was arrested in the morning (Thursday) in a joint operation with the Haryana Police.
Baljit’s brother, who is a reader with a sub divisional magistrate-level officer in Haryana, has also been questioned, said Gill, explaining that Baljit and Papalpreet had known one another for over two years and Papalpreet had been regularly visiting her in Kurukshetra.
There is no information with the police about where Amritpal and Papalpreet spent the night of March 18.
According to news agency ANI, 38-year-old Papalpreet is the brains behind Amritpal’s escape from the police dragnet Saturday. “He (Papalpreet) was in close contact with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and was taking instructions from them,” reported the agency.
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‘Police on trail’
A radical Sikh intellectual and scholar, Papalpreet is said to have taken Amritpal under his wing a day after the latter arrived in Punjab from Dubai on August 20 last year. He allegedly familiarised Amritpal with Sikh history and the Khalistan movement of the 1980s-1990s, police sources said. Papalpreet has been generating interviews with former militants and also journaling incidents of the days of militancy.
Many of Papalpreet’s social media accounts have been banned over the years, said police sources, adding that “he provided an intellectual justification for Amritpal’s separatist utterances and encouraged him in the process”.
Papalpreet was one of the accused in a sedition case filed against the organisers of the Sarbat Khalsa at Chabba village in 2015.
Gill said that all states in India have been alerted with regards to Amritpal and Papalpreet “who could be anywhere”. He asserted that the police “are on their trail”.
According to the IG, Amritpal was using multiple and unexpected forms of transport to move, making it difficult for the police to nab him.
“He has managed to change his look and is using different kinds of transport to shift from one place to another. The last footage we have of him in Punjab is of 9.40 pm on March 18 near Hardy’s World (amusement park) in Ludhiana, from where he is seen entering an auto or a three-wheeler,” he said.
“Before that, there is footage of the evening from Shekuwal village near Bilga where he is seen on another bike which he had snatched from a village resident. A fresh case is being registered on the statement being given by the bike owner,” he added.
“After disposing of the bike, Amritpal tried to take a boat across the Sutlej river but when a boat was not available, they managed to cross the river using the old Ladhowal Bridge. The two are clearly avoiding main roads and travelling only on village roads where there is less traffic and visibility,” the IG explained.
Amritpal and Papalpreet have been spotted in various video footage in Punjab and Haryana gathered painstakingly over the past 2-3 days, according to the police. A video of the two in Kurukshetra was released by the police.
Gill said that “207 people have been arrested since the Saturday crackdown, of which 177 have been taken in preventive detention to maintain public order”. He added that those not involved in the criminal cases against Amritpal and his men will be released shortly.
“We are dealing with these 177 people sensitively. They seem to have come under Amritpal’s influence but are not involved in any major crime,” said Gill.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)