FATEHGARH SAHIB, India, Dec. 4, Reuter: Police stopped 2,000 rebellious Sikhs from marching to New Delhi on Thursday to press demands for political concessions in the strife torn northern State of Punjab.
The Sikh leaders and their supporters assembled outside a Gurdwara in the Sikh pilgrimage town of Fatehgarh Sahib, 50 km from the Punjab State Capital Chandigarh, but police and magistrates said the march had been banned, Sikh leaders want a political settlement in Punjab which has been ruled directly by New Delhi since last May when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sacked a moderate Sikh government on the grounds it had failed to contain growing violence.
They also want freedom for Sikhs detained on National Security grounds and rehabilitation for dismissed Sikh soldiers who mutinied after the 1984 Indian army assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine.
Prakash Singh Badal, a former Punjab Chief Minister, who was freed from detention two days go, told reporters: “What other avenues are open to use if the peaceful march is bad?”
“It this suppression of rights of people in Punjab and Sikhs in particular”, he said, adding: “It is gal and unconstitutional and makes a mockery of the United Nations Charter of Human Rights”.
Supporters of Badal in Patiala and Bhatinda districts were also stopped from reaching Fatehgarh Sahib.
The 230 km march to the Indian Capital was organized by militant Sikh leaders in Punjab where Sikhs are fighting for an independent homeland.
But on Thursday Punjab Police Chief Julio Ribeiro banned the march to prevent large-scale trouble in New Delhi.
The State government on Thursday placed former Sikh head priest Darshan Singh under house arrest, saying they had reliable information that an’ attempt on his life would be made.
Sne reas Lest of India (PTI) said Darshan Singh who was last seen at the Sikh Gurdwara in Zikarpur, near Chandigarh, had “disappeared” from there.
Badal said “thousands of Sikhs are languishing in jails and all promises made to them have not been fulfilled and now this peaceful march has been banned”.
Amrinder Singh, whose family once ruled the princely state of Patiala, told the marchers many of their supporters would “somehow” reach Delhi by Friday to begin a protest meeting near the Parliament.
The protestors in trucks, cars and other vehicles got but one km out of Fatehgarh Sahib, about 50 km from Chandigarh when they were stopped by police, eyewitnesses said.
Many then turned back but several hundred dismounted from their vehicles and sat on the road chanting prayers, eyewitnesses said.
After police orders to disperse were ignored, the eyewitnesses said, police used their long bamboo batons to clear the road and arrested about 400 people, all of whom were later released.
Among those arrested was Prakash Singh Badal, a former Punjab Chief Minister who was freed two days earlier from a year’s detention under National Security laws.
Police also stopped other would-be marchers from reaching Fatehgarh Sahib, a fortress town of the 17th century Sikh Guru (teacher) Gobind Singh.
Punjab has been under New Delhi’s direct rule since May when Prime Minister Rajiy Gandhi sacked a moderate Sikh government for failing to contain violence in Punjab.
The Sikh leaders also want freedom for Sikhs detained on National Security grounds and rehabilitation for dismissed Sikh soldiers who mutinied after the 1984 Indian army raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs? Holiest shrine.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 11, 1987
