AMRITSAR, India Unidentified Gunmen assassinated a Punjab state legislator Monday and sprayed a crowded market with gunfire, injuring a militant Hindu leader and killing his bodyguard.

Police said Sant Singh, a Sikh and Punjab state assemblyman for Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress (I) Party, was walking near his farm at Lodhar, about 20 miles south of Amritsar, when two Gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire.

‘A second farmer working nearby was seriously injured and Singh, 40, who survived two previous attempts on his life, died in a hospital. It was the first assassination of a state legislator since September’s elections in Punjab, where politically suppressed Sikhs are fighting for a separate state,

In other violence Monday, Gunmen sprayed gunfire at a militant Hindu leader in a crowded Amritsar market, police in the Sikhs’ holy city said. The Hindu leader, Surinder kumar Billa, was injured along with two bystanders, and Billa’s bodyguard was killed.

The five suspects drove through the market in a car and fired submachine guns at Billa the president of the militant Hindu Nationalist Society, a Punjab-based fundamentalist organization.

The Press Trust of India news agency said the two attacks came after police advised Punjab politicians to adopt stricter security precautions because of the fear of an attack on political targets. ‘As Punjab Chief Minister Sujit ‘Singh Barnala traveled to Lodhar to attend Singhs funeral, the Punjab Congress (I) Party held an emergency ‘meeting in the: state capital Chandigarh and condemned the state government’s perceived leniency toward violent elements.

Opposition state legislators and the central government have expressed concern over the release by Barnala’s government of hundreds of Sikh youths jailed under the National Security Act.

Barnala’s moderate Sikh political party, the Akali Dal, was swept to power in September’s state elections, which resulted in a ‘crushing defeat for Gandhi’s Congress (I) Party Inspire of hopes the new government has failed to control violence in the stepped up attacks, more than 30 people have been killed this month, authorities said.

Article extracted from this publication >> May 2, 1986