Police may take responsibility of educating militants’ wards

He said there was a nexus between politicians with radical ideology, human rights groups and militants who have escaped to foreign countries with the aim of reviving militancy. Dogra added than an attempt was being made to exploit the sentiments of families of former militants on the pretext that the Akali Dal government had failed to rehabilitate them. He said allegations of police harassment of these families had also been made by certain human rights groups.

Those arrested by the Gurdaspur police include Amarjit Singh, the key organiser, Raj Kumar, Kulwant Singh and Avtar Singh, all from Noormehal in Jalandhar district. He said two group members — Kuldip Singh and Amandip Singh — were absconding and Amandip Singh had volunteered to become a human bomb.

The recovery included 15 kg of RDX, 10 electronic detonators, 20 mechanical detonators, four boxes of time pencils, four blasting caps, a .30-bore Mauser pistol with 20 cartridges, .445-bore Colt pistol with five cartridges, two switched and four HE-36 hand grenades.

The Punjab Police chief said the arrested youth represented the International Sikh Youth Federation (Chaheru), an ideological platform of the Khalistan Commando Force (Panjwar). He said earlier, a quintal of RDX was recovered from this group in February 1998 during the Jalandhar election.

Dogra said Amarjit Singh, a bank employee, had played a key role in the revival of the group under the motivation of an old associate, Jaswinder Singh, settled in England. The interrogation of militants revealed that they received the assignment from Pakistan through the Jammu border and the second assignment was yet to come from the Nepalese border. He said police got wind that a Maruti van (PB-44-2005) was heading towards Pathankot to lift the consignment and launched an operation, supervised by SSP Gaurav Yadav, Pathankot SP Shiv Kumar and ASP Gautam Cheema.

Dogra said he had issued clear instructions to the police personnel in the state not to harass members of families of former militants.

Referring to the “people’s convention for people’s commission”, organised recently in Amritsar by Dal Khalsa activists, he said families of former militants were invited to provoke their sentiments. He said the agenda was not discussed at all but the police was made the target of criticism.

Dogra said pro-Khalistan elements had been spreading false propaganda about the working of the police Internet as more than a dozen websites have been hired by various organisations. He said Punjab Police was also considering developing a website to counter the propaganda.