-Ajay Bhardwaj
Come Operation Blue Star anniversary, there is a palpable tension in the air in Punjab.
Pro-Khalistani groups would get their acts together, while the iconic Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale comes alive. There is a deafening resonation of slogans in favour of Bhindranwale and Khalistan, while T-shirts, pamphelets and
pro-Khalistan literature are displayed lavishly at the kiosks around the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Along with, it is also the time for a large number of fringe radical groups to whip up pro-Khalistan sentiments and bring back the memories of the Operation Bluestar that was conducted in 1984 to flush out militants led by Bhindranwale from the Golden Temple complex.
This year was no different.
Pro-Khalistan slogans were raised at the Golden Temple complex on the 33rd anniversary of the Operation Blue Star, while the Amritsar city observed complete bandh on the call of the radical Sikh outfit, Dal Khalsa, which had engineered the hijacking of an Indian Airlines Jetliner (Boeing 737) in 1981 to Pakistan.
President of the Shiromani Akali Dal Sukhbir Badal, who has also been the deputy chief minister under his father Parkash Singh Badal as a chief minister, set the tone in a way by visiting Damdami Taksal in Chowk Mehta, once the headquarters of Bhindranwale.
He paid obeissance at the gurdwara, and took part in the “akhand paath” undertaken to pay homage to Bhindranwale.
Interestingly, Sukhbir, during his ten years in power, had never visited the place.
At the Akal Takht in the Golden Temple the customary address by the Akal Takht head priest Giani Gurbachan Singh was disrupted by a section of hardliners who raised slogans in favour of Khalistan and against the Jathedar.
In his address the head priest compared the Army attack on the Golden Temple to the atrocities committed on the Sikhs under the Mughals and the British rulers. He expressed concern at the incidents of sacrilege, female foeticide and drug addiction and also spoke of Sikh
prisoners languishing in jails.
The calls of ‘Khalistan Zindabad’ by supporters of Akali Dal (Amritsar) led by Simranjit Singh Mann, rent the skies putting the security forces on tenterhooks.
However, the ‘Sarbat Khalsa’ appointed “parallel” head priest Dhian Singh Mand, held a separate meeeting at the ground floor of the Takht in which he accused former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal of interfering in Sikh religious affairs, including in the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).
As many as 15 companies of para-military forces, including CRPF, ITBP and RAF, kept a watch at the Temple.
A large number of participants later paid homage at the controversial memorial dedicated to separatist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other “martyrs” of the Operation Bluestar Complex.
The memorial was constructed by the Damdami Taksal in 2013 and was handed over to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the highest body of the Sikh religion that manages several shrines across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh.
A plaque on the memorial in Amritsar mentions that it is a gurdwara in the memory of “the 14th head of Damdami Taksal Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and all martyrs of the 1984 holocaust”.
A serious fall-out of the Bluestar anniversary is that it provides a chance to militants to get active and initiate a
campaign to motivate the youth to join them, even as militants do not enjoy any support at the grass root level in villages.
In May, the Punjab Police busted two terror modules in separate operations.
In the first operation, the police and the BSF busted a terror module with links to Canada and Pakistan, and had arrested two persons.
The security forces had also seized a huge cache of arms, including an AK-47 assault rifle and other ammunition from the two, who were arrested from the ndo-Pak border area while trying to recover the weapons pushed into the Indian territory from Pakistan. The terrorists during preliminary interrogation have said their module was raised and indoctrinated by an Ontario-based Sikh hardliner Gurjivan Singh, who was in touch with them for the past two years, and had motivated them to commit terror strikes in Punjab.
“Gurjivan made two trips to Punjab in the last six months, and had arranged the arms and ammunition for their operations through his Pakistan-based Khalistani contacts,” said a senior Punjab police officer adding that they were planning to target “enemies of the Panth”. They also said during his last two trips to Punjab, Gurjivan had imparted them theoretical training on handling arms, including the AK-47 rifle, he said.
“One of the arrested has said the Ontario-based hardliner travelled with them to Uttar Pradesh to procure arms but were unsuccessful. Subsequently, Gurjivan had promised to arrange it through his Khalistani contacts in Pakistan and their ISI handlers,” he added.
During the interrogation, Mann also confessed to having made several visits to Pakistan and being in touch with some Khalistani activists there, he claimed. The spokesman said the arms and ammunition seized during the operation were found buried close to the Indo-Pak border and the suspects had been provided with the co-ordinates of the spot.
In the other operation, police had arrested four persons, including a woman, who were allegedly planning to indulge in violence and targeted killings under the banner of ‘Khalistan Zindabad’.
On the radar of these “highly radicalised” youths were Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar who were accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, as well as those responsible for incidents of sacrilege and desecration.
The three men, believed to be members of the banned International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) were identified as Gurdial Singh, Jagroop Sigh and Satwinder Singh. The police said the trio were trained by Pakistan based ISYF Chief Lakhbir Rode and Harmeet Singh lias Happy or PHD.
“Gurdial hails from Road Majara area of Hoshiarpur, and Jagroop and Satiwinder are residents of Chandpur Rurki Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar District. A .32 bore pistol, with one magazine and 10 cartridges and a .38 bore revolver, with 7 cartridges have also been recovered from them,” the Punjab Police spokesperson said. Surely Punjab needs to be cautious about these developments. *
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