AMRITSAR: The five-member Panthic Committee (Dr Sohan Singh and others) and its allied Organisations have started an underground newspaper called Awaze-Khalistan.

The newspaper will not have any regular periodicity but will be brought out from time to time a Statement issued by the committee and carried by the first issue of the newspaper announced.

The production of the newspaper is presumably the militant answer to the government ban on their statements in the media.

The committee criticized Prime Minister Shekhar and Punjab Governor Malhotra and said that Sikhs did not believe in forgiving those who merely paid lip-service of sympathy at the time of Operation “Blue Star” The committee deprecated any such talk by certain Sikhs as misleading.

Observers feel that the production of the newspaper by the militants is the first step towards building up underground channel of communication by them just as the Operation “Black thunder” in 1987 led to the widening of the underground armed movement in Punjab.

The first issue is in the nature of a pioneer underground newspaper.

Article extracted from this publication >> March 22, 1991