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12-05-2023
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ AMRITSAR: Five people have been arrested after a third blast in less than a week shook the area around the Sikh holy site of the Golden Temple in Punjab state’s Amritsar city, Indian police said.
Two of the suspects had prepared the improvised explosive devices at a guest house in the city, state police director general Gaurav Yadav told reporters on Thursday, while the other three provided the materials.
He gave no information about their suspected motives and said investigations were continuing.
A movement for a separate Sikh homeland known as Khalistan caused deadly violence in India’s Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s.
In March, a manhunt was launched in the state to arrest a firebrand Sikh separatist who encouraged protests and vandalism among the diaspora.
It was unclear whether the manhunt was connected to the three explosions.
No injuries were reported in the third blast, which happened at about midnight, with police describing it as low intensity.
“The area is totally sealed and a forensic team is working on it,” police official Naunihal Singh said.
The previous two blasts, at the weekend and on Monday, each wounded one person.
Punjab’s Golden Temple, a gleaming edifice in the middle of a large artificial pond, is revered by Sikhs the world over but it has been the scene of violence in the past, most notably when Indian Special Forces stormed it in 1984 to remove Sikh separatist fighters.
Meanwhile, Indian police had arrested Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh after searching for him for more than a month, a state police official says of an operation against the revival of an independent Sikh homeland in the state of Punjab bordering Pakistan.
The rise of Singh, a preacher in the northwestern state of Punjab, where Sikhs are the majority has revived talk of such a homeland and stoked fears of a return to violence of the 1980s and early 1990s.
“Amritpal Singh has been arrested from the Rode village in Moga district, Punjab, on the basis of specific intelligence,” Sukhchain Singh Gill, a top official in the Punjab police, told reporters on Sunday.
Singh and supporters armed with swords, knives and guns raided a police station in February after one of the preacher’s aides was arrested for assault and attempted kidnapping.
