AMRITSAR, INDIA, AUG, 6, REUTER — a former Sikh high priest and 19 followers were released from jail in the North Indian state of Punjab on Saturday, then promptly rearrested.
Punjab police Chief K.P.S Gill told reporters the 20, ordered freed by a magistrate on Saturday afternoon, were detained again in the evening under a law which allows for the detention of those likely to breach the peace.
The former high priest, Bhai Jasbir Singh Rode, was first arrested on May 1i for breaking a curfew when he tried to enter Amritsar’s Golden Temple, Sikhdom’s holiest shrine, as it was under siege by security forces.
The magistrate said since the maximum penalty for curfew breaking was one month in jail, and Rode and the 19 other priests arrested with him had been in jail for more than two months, they must be set free.
While they were in jail, Rode and the four other high priests of the Golden Temple were sacked and replaced by the committee which governs India’s Sikh temples.
Elsewhere in Punjab, police said six people were killed in the bloody militant campaign for an independent Sikh homeland which has claimed more than 1,600 lives this year.
They said one was an official of the main Sikh political party, the United Akali Dal, shot by extremists as he sat outside his shop in the town of Kharar.
Two extremists were also killed in clashes with police.
Seven Party National Fronts:
Article extracted from this publication >> August 12, 1988
