ONE DOWN, MANY TO GO

As dawn broke on the morn­ ing of April 23 and the amrit vela nitnem (prayers at dawn) at the Gurudwara Janam Asthan Sant Khalsa in Punjab’s Rode village came to a close, Waris Punjab De (WPD) leader and fugitive Amritpal Singh Sandhu took the mike to recite a few stanzas from the Gurbani and address the gathering

- Anilesh S. Mahajan

The locals say Amritpal reached Rode, the an­ cestral village of slain militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, late on Saturday night. At around 6.15 am on Sunday, he reached the gurdwara with two aides in an SUV. In his brief speech, which went live on social media platforms, he justified the step he was about to take and said it wasn’t the end of his story, but a new start. “I will return to start the amrit sanchar and khalsa vaheer (Sikh religious rites),” he said. Minutes later, he walked out and surrendered to the police. The manhunt for the char­ ismatic Khalistani propagandist, on since March 18 after the Punjab police decided to crack down on his WPD network, was finally over.

Amritpal, who at every stage see­ med a step ahead of the authorities, faces a bevy of criminal charges and has been slapped with the National Security Act (NSA). From Rode, Amritpal was driven straight to the Indian Air Force station at Bathinda and flown to Di­ brugarh in Assam, where he joins eight of his aides lodged in the high­security Central Jail there. All of them face charges under the NSA, empowering security agencies to hold them in preventive custody without showing cause.