SUNAM, India, Oct, 5 Reuter: Karamjit Singh’s attempt to kill Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi three days ago in New Delhi has brought un welcome attention to this market town in southeast Punjab where Singh lived most of his life.

‘Scores of police and detectives have descended on the quiet, dusty 15th century town of 40,000 people looking for a motive for the ‘would be assassin.

Karamjit father, Amar Singh, who repairs watches and radios for a living, has been taken away for questioning.

“Karamjit came from a nondescript family, he was a loner and had few friends. He certainly did not behave like a terrorist”, neighbors Gurcharan Singh told Reuters

When news of the attack on Gandhi reached Sunam the towns people withdrew into a sullen silence and refused to talk about Karamjit Singh or his family.

The little watch repair store in the busy marketplace was boarded up today and the family’s three room house, just a few yards (mattes) from the town’s oldest Sikh shrine, was padlocked.

“Karmajit’s mother has fled with her two other sons,” a neighbors said as she gathered up her children playing in the narrow street and hurried inside. “We don’t want to talk to anybody”.

Gurcharan Singh said Karamjit’ father lived most of the time in his shop because he had quarreled with his wife.

Sunam’s police Chief Daljit Singh told Reuters Karamjit appeared to want revenge for the anti Sikh riots after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was murdered by her bodyguards two years ago. At least 2,100 people died in the riots, more than 2,100 in the Indian capital alone,

The police Chief said investigations had shown Karamjit, who dropped out of an engineering course, was employed in a workshop owned by a Hindu in an East Delhi suburb when the riots erupted.

He said Karamjit had told his interrogators a Sikh friend was killed by Hindus, but he had escaped by hiding in his employer’s house. Karamjit fled Delhi after Cutting off his long hair and beard and discarding his distinctive turban.

He slipped into a depression after he returned to Sunam and was also deeply upset by the rift between his parents, one neighbors said. Three months ago he vanished.

Surnam has not been known for: violence during the current Sikh campaign for a separate state in Punjab, but it was the home of a famous Sikh assassin, Udham Singh.

He waited more than 20 years to avenge the shooting of more than 300 unarmed people by British Troops in Amritsar in 1919, In London on March 13, 1940, he shot dead Michael O’Dwyer, who ‘was Governor of British ruled Punjab at the time of the “Jallianwala Bagh massacre”.

Article extracted from this publication >> October 10, 1986