NEW DELHI, India: A powerful Sikh leader is to stand trial on charges of waging war against the Indian state in a case filed after the 1984 army assault on the Golden Temple, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.
Gurcharan Singh Tohra, President of the influential Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee was named as the principal accused in the case to be heard by a special court in Jodhpur in northern Rajasthan state, PTI said.
It said, Mr. Tohra who was arrested in December was to face trial with 3365 rounded up during
The army assault on the Temple, the holiest of Sikh shrines, located in the Punjab city of Amritsar.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Tohra and the other accused had waged war against the Indian government by conspiring among themselves and confronting military and paramilitary forces between June 5 and 10 of 1984.
Mr. Tohra was arrested on Dec. 2, two days after he was reelected to a second term as the head of the Sikh Committee. Also taken into custody at the time was another Sikh leader Parkash Singh Badal.
The two had bolted from the moderate Sikh Party Akali Dal after criticizing the decision of Surjit Singh Barnala the Party’s current leader and Punjab Chief Minister to order the police into the Golden Temple again in 1986.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee is considered to be the highest spiritual body of India’s 19 million Sikhs. It has an annual budget of nearly 100 million dollars and plays a major role in Punjab politics.
NEWSMAN HELD: A newsman of the Ludhiana district in the Indian State of Punjab, Pritam Singh Barsal, was arrested yesterday under the Antiterrorist Act, says a brief report.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 8, 1987
