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Punjab Timeline - 2008


Date
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Incidents
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January 4
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The Delhi Police claimed to have foiled an attempt
to kill Baba Pyara Singh Paniharewala, a Ropar-based religious
leader, with the arrest of four alleged Babbar Khalsa International
(BKI) militants, Baljeet
Singh, Bikkar Singh, Kulwinderjeet Singh and Tirlochan Singh.
On the hit list of the terrorists were four other prominent personalities
of Punjab, the police said. Four pistols and 124 live cartridges
were allegedly seized from their possession.
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January 10
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According to The Hindu, intelligence inputs
on the movement of BKI militants have indicated that fugitive
Jagtar Singh Tara who had escaped from the high-security Burail
Jail in Punjab in 2004 and managed to cross over to Pakistan has
moved up the ladder in the hierarchy of the outfit and is now
supervising operations from there.
The Director General of Police (DGP) in Punjab,
N. P. S. Aulakh, said that Pakistan's external intelligence agency,
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),
is behind the regrouping of Babbar Khalsa militant group in Punjab.
Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh, he claimed the that
Babbar Khalsa engineered the Ludhiana bomb blast in October 2007
and had planned the elimination of the Dera Sacha Sauda Chief
Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh, Baba Bhaniarewala and certain other heads
of religious sects operating in Punjab. The DGP further said that
Babbar Khalsa operatives arrested by Ludhiana police have revealed
that they got arms training in Pakistan. He said that the police
has identified a new terrorist group in the name of the International
Liberation Revolutionary Force (ILRF) working in the Malwa region
and arrested all the six persons behind the formation of this
outfit along with one AK 47 rifle and other weapons.
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January 16
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Police in Ludhiana arrested Mohammed Ali a.k.a.
Alia for allegedly supplying RDX to the proscribed BKI militants
in order to create disruption in Punjab.
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February 4
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The BKI militants arrested in connection with
the blast at a cinema hall in Ludhiana on October 14, 2007, have
told the investigators that they had approached Naga outfits for
supply of arms and ammunition, Zee News reported. During their
interrogation, the militants told the central security agencies
that few Sikh youths had been tasked to kill political leaders
including Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal, his son Sukhbir,
president of the All India Anti-Terrorist Front M. S. Bitta and
former Punjab Director General of Police K. P. S Gill, official
sources said. The militants also told the investigators that they
had tried to contact NSCN insurgents for procuring of weapons,
the sources said without elaborating whether the Punjab militants
were able to strike a deal with NSCN militants or not.
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February 15
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Three Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF) militants
were sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment by a court
in the national capital New Delhi for a bomb blast in the Kailash
Hotel in Paharganj area on March 13, 2000 in which three persons
were wounded. The court sentenced the KZF militants, Sukhdev Singh,
Satbir Singh and Purushottam Singh, after holding them guilty
for entering into a conspiracy to wage war against the country.
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March 6
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Remnants of Sikh militants abroad are helping
attempts to revive an insurgency in Punjab, Prime Minister Dr.
Manmohan Singh warned in a letter obtained on March 5, AFP reported.
In a letter to the guardians of Sikhism's holiest shrine, the
Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Prime Minister said die-hard separatists
were receiving support from sympathisers living overseas. "The
government and our agencies have credible information of efforts
being made by extremist groups to revive militancy in Punjab,"
the premier said in the letter. "Much of this is concentrated
in countries abroad like the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and
especially Pakistan, where such groups receive a great deal of
encouragement from remnants of extremist groups as well as support
from other hostile forces," he wrote. Singh was responding to
an appeal for a review of an official "blacklist" of most-wanted
insurgents who fled India at the peak of the insurgency in Punjab.
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| March 11 |
Sify.com quoting intelligence sources reports
that the ISI is making serious attempts to revive Sikh militancy
in India by coordinating and establishing linkages among various
terrorist outfits with the Sikh extremist leaders. The ISI activities
to this extent have been planned from countries like the US, Canada,
Germany, UK, France, Norway and Belgium, besides Pakistan in the
absence of ground support in India. The various terror groups
have established nexus among themselves in terms of financial
and logistical support, sharing of information and tactical planning.
An intelligence input indicated that representatives of BKI, International
Sikh Youth Federation/Rhode (ISYF) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) met
in Berlin in June 2007 and decided that financial support would
be extended to the LeT and logistical support to the BKI to carry
out terrorist actions in India. Another input indicated that Nationalist
Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) had got in
touch with a UK-based organisation, Parliamentarians for National
Self-Determination (PNSD) for modelling their ‘position paper’
on the pattern of the ‘Sikh Position Paper’.
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March 21
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In a follow-up to the December 31, 2007-arrest
of four Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) militants, the Delhi
Police on March 20 claimed to have arrested two others of the
same group from Jalandhar in Punjab. Deputy Commissioner (Special
Cell) Alok Kumar said Jaswant Singh alias Kala (31) and Surender
Singh alias Fauji (22) were arrested on March 19 near Sutlej bridge
in Jalandhar. One .30 Star make pistol and one .22 Star make pistol
with 11 live cartridges were recovered from them. While Kala hails
from Muktsar, Fauji is a native of Jalandhar in Punjab, he said.
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