Amritsar blast: Amarinder Singh to visit attack site, announces Rs 50 lakh reward for info leading to suspects’ arrest

JALANDHAR – Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday announced a reward of 50 rupees for information leading to the arrest of the suspects involved in the explosion of Adliwal’s grenade in Amritsar.

Information can be provided on the Punjab Police Department hotline number 181 and the identity of the caller will be kept secret. The prime minister of Punjab is expected to visit the site of the explosion along with the top officials of the Punjab police today.

Interestingly, on the evening of Sunday night, the CCTV images of two people, suspected of being behind the attack on the Nirankari congregation, became viral on social networks. Their faces were covered in cloth and they traveled on a motorcycle without any license plate number similar to what was said to be of the terrorists.

However, when contacted by HuffPost India, SPS Parmar IG Border Zone denied the publication of such images to the media.

“We have received some crucial contributions, but so far we have not received any image of the suspects, we are working on it and we hope to resolve the case soon,” Parmar said.

Two teams from the National Research Agency NIA visited the site to investigate.

The sikh pro-Sikh defense group based in the United States Sikhs for Justice, which has been accused of the attack, denied participating in the incident. They challenged the chief minister of Punjab to prove the charges against him.

“It is indisputable that having secessionist views and campaigning peacefully for independence is not a crime,” said a statement from the SFJ, issued from its New York office. The human rights group that heads the 2020 Referendum reiterated that its secessionist campaign to “realize the right to self-determination of Sikhs is based on the principle enshrined in the UN Charter and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

In criticizing Singh’s accusations that SFJ is involved in terrorist activities in the name of the referendum, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the group’s legal advisor, said: “SFJ believes in ballots not explosions to achieve its goal.”

Referring to India’s recent concerted propaganda of alleging SFJ’s involvement in violent activities, Pannun also said: “As is clear from the so-called counterinsurgency operations of India in the 1990s, the purpose of floating such unfounded accusations is Desensitize public opinion before unleashing large-scale state violence in a section of the civilian population. ”

Pannun said that SFJ will counteract “India’s malicious campaign internationally.”

SFJ in its London Declaration in August 2018, had announced a poll for the referendum in November 2020 that would likely be held in Punjab in India along with major cities in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Kenya. and the countries of the Middle East.