AMRITSAR, INDIA, Jan. 7, Reuter — As a sequence to the execution of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassins, gunmen shot down 14 Hindus in two attacks in the north Indian state of Punjab on Saturday. In the first attack since the executions in New Delhi on Friday they shot dead 10 farmhands. In the second, gunmen sprayed bullets at a brick kiln, killing four workers and wounding two.
Surviving relatives told reporters that in the first attack, at Baddowal 40 km (25 miles) north of Amritsar, men were separated from women and children then shot dead.
Police said that three or four gunmen waving AK47 rifles also burst into a brick kiln at Sarai Amanat Khan, near the border with Pakistan, and opened fire indiscriminately.
It was the biggest attack of the year so far, bringing the total deaths in the militant campaign for an independent Sikh homeland in the northern state of Punjab to at least 50 since January 1, Some 2,500 people were killed in 1988.
They took all 10 occupants outside and killed them with automatic rifle fire. Police said no further details were available.
The authorities mounted a huge security operation across Northern India in anticipation of trouble after the executions of the men held responsible for the 1984 assassination.
Gandhi’s killing was provoked by her order for an Army attack on Amritsar’s Golden Temple, the center of the Sikh faith.
More than 6,000 people, many of them innocent devotees, died in the five-day operation seen by most Sikhs as sacrilege.
Major Punjab cities remained quiet on Saturday morning after militants called on people to observe three days of mourning for the executed men by closing business and staying at home, residents said.
Heavy rain across North India, along with the security operation, kept immediate protests against the executions quiet.
Some young Sikhs stoned two buses in West Delhi and three buses were burned in Punjab. But no injuries were reported in what police said were short-lived incidents.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 13, 1989
