AMRITSAR, India Gumen killed a local leader of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party Saturday and wounded his bodyguard in the second fatal attack on a Congress Party politician in four days, police reported.
They said Raj Pal Kadd, the party’s leader in Punjab state’s Gurdaspur district, was slain by three gunmen while he was dispensing medicine in his pharmacy in the town of Fategarh Churian.
He was the fifth Hindu politician killed since the Sept. 25 elections when Sikh moderates won control of the state government. The election pitted candidates of the predominantly Hindu Congress Party against moderate Sikhs, with Sikh extremists boycotting the balloting.
On Wednesday, Ram Lubhaya, a campaign manager for a Congress Party candidate in Amritsar district, was shot to death on his dairy farm in Tarn Taran city.
Police said no arrests have been made.
Sikhs, demanding a separate homeland in Punjab, have been accused of targeting moderate Sikhs and some Hindu leaders despite a peace accord for Punjab in July and the elections that restored local government after direct federal rule for two years.
Sikhs form a majority in Punjab but are a minority in the rest of Hindu dominated India.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 25, 1985
