AMRITSAR, India— Radical Sikh youths demanding freedom for Jailed comrades set up road blockades across Punjab Friday and violence in the predominantly Sikh state left three people killed. Most roads were deserted as people stayed or took trains to avoid Confrontations,
Punjab Chief Minister Sujit Singh Barnala said four militants delivering a fiery speech against the blockade shot and killed an elderly man inside a Sikh temple at Sultanpur Lodhi, 37 miles east of Amritsar.
Sikh moderates chased the gunmen fatally shot one of them and captured the others, the minister said.
Unidentified persons hurled a powerful homemade bomb at the home of a Hindu near Amritsar and ran away, police reported. The attack wrecked the house. The Hindu, identified as Ashok Kumar, was not at home when the bomb was thrown, police said.
In another incident, a policeman was killed in an ambush attack by unidentified persons in Punjab’s Ludhiana district, state police reported. No one was arrested, and it was not clear if the attack was linked with the roadblock protests.
Police said more than 200 Sikh radicals were arrested for staging sit-ins on highways, but the militants claimed at least 1,000 were detained.
Officials said dozens of people were injured during the daylong blockade, which ended at sunset Police used metal-tipped truncheons and tear gas to scatter protesters and also opened gunfire.
The agitations shut many factories, businesses and shops in the northern Indian state, home of India’s 13-miltion member volatile Sikh minority.
About 75,000 police and paramilitary troops were deployed across the state in response to the blockade, called by the All-India Sikh Students Federation to demand the release of all youths imprisoned in Punjab under controversial anti-terrorist laws.
Militants claimed the blocade was successful and vowed to intensify their struggle against the 3month-old moderate Sikh state government.
Punjab Chief Minister Surjit Singh Barnala, the state’s top elected official and leader of the moderates, said the blockade, “evoked Poor response.”
Demonstrators battled with nightstick-swinging police for an hour in the nearby city of Tarn, the police control room said. It did not provide details,
Police said they fired at youths who hurled rocks at a convoy of 32 buses under police escort outside of Amritsar, but no one was injured.
The convoy was organized by Barnalas son, Gagandeep Singh, who planned to drive through the state from Amritsar’s Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine, to defy the blockade,
The new state government of the moderate Sikhs Akali Dal party, elected Sept. 25 in polling boycotted by the militants, has ordered the release of only 200 jailed youth activists, but the federation says hundreds more remain imprisoned, including its leaders.
The blockade is the first major confrontation between the radicals, many of whom want an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab, and the new state government. Bamala said in an appeal published in newspapers today that the blockade was “an attempt by misguided elements to block development” in the state, and urged citizens to ignore it.
The student federation also is demanding an amnesty for nearly 5,000 Sikh soldiers who mutinied to protest the June 1984 Indian army attack on the Golden Temple.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 17, 1986
