CANDIGARH, India: About 40 leaders of Badal Akali Dal including 20 Akali MLAs and 5 MPs courted arrest at Chandigarh on August 15, by violating prohibitory orders under section 144 enforced in the city as part of their plan to observe protest day. Led by the senior vice
President of the party. The kedar Surjan Singh, about 35 party men emerged from Gurdwara in sector 8 to march towards Raj Bhawan where thread announced that they will sit in Dharana at 4 p.m. They broke the police cordon and pushed along two hundred meters before Mr. Sukhjinder Singh, former Education Minister, asked the party men to sit in Dharna on the road. They readily boarded the bus the police had brought to take them to the police station.
Minutes after the first batch was taken away from the scene, five Akali MPs Bhai Shaminder Singh Charnajit Singh Ropar, Charanjit Singh Walia, Tarlochan Singh Tur and Mewa Singh Gill came in a car and courted arrest. Mr. Talib Singh Sandhu, MLA of Badal Akali Dal was among the persons arrested, Mr. Sandhu was wanted by the Punjab police in connection with the mob violence in Golden Temple where a crowd of militants killed a member of the S.G.P.C. Task Force.
The police said that handful of policemen and officers tried to stop the precisionists by forming a human wall arrested MLAs and MPs were produced before the Chief Judicial of Magistrate at Chandigarh who discharged them from the case registered against them under section 1881PC. They were let off in the evening, however, 17 persons who were arrested during the past few days from Chandigarh were not released, and More than 150 workers of the Akali Dal were arrested.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 22, 1986
