Dera head taken to secret place

In another development, the Navgarh police arrested 27 members of the Sikh community for rioting which occurred in retaliation to the shooting at the mall. Thousands of Sikhs had hit the streets of Mumbai’s north-eastern suburbs on Saturday, blocking road and rail traffic and fighting pitched battles with the riot police while demanding action against the Dera chief and his men.

“So far, we have arrested 27 men and booked them for rioting. They were produced in court and remanded to police custody till June 24,” said Senior Police Inspector Vijay Bhaskar Raut of the Navgarh police station in Mumbai.

As protests by Sikh groups spilled over into Bangalore, Mysore and Jammu besides several towns of Punjab and Haryana, president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) Avtar Singh Makkar appealed to them to “maintain calm and not to allow themselves to be provoked”.

Makkar who reached Mumbai on Sunday along with a four-member delegation from the Sikhs’ highest religious body, said protests should be within the “parameters of the law” and announced Rs 5 lakh to dependents of Balkar Singh (40), who was killed in the firing by the Dera chief’s bodyguards on Friday.

The SGPC also said a delegation from Amritsar would meet Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil and Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh soon to submit a memorandum, following which the committee would decide next course of action.

Swords and daggers drawn, members of the Sikh community blocked traffic on Jammu-Pathankote national highway and burnt the Dera chief in effigy in Sirsa, Moga and Sangrur though the protests remained by and large peaceful, police reports said.

Radical groups Damdami Taksal and Sant Samaj demanded that Ram Rahim Singh be arrested by Tuesday after which they would call a rail-road blockade.