The north-western Indian State of Punjab continues to be peaceful and has been free of terrorist violence so far in the year 2006. This is the 13th consecutive year the State has remained free from major political violence after the terrorist-secessionist movement for Khalistan was comprehensively defeated in 1993. This trend was visible in the year 2005 also.
Even as no terrorist violence was reported in 2005, inputs continue to be received about plans of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, and Pakistan-based Sikh militant leaders to create violence and revive militancy in Punjab, according to the Union Home Ministry’s Annual Report 2005-06.
The pro-Khalistan groups Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), Khalistan Commando Force (P) and Khalistan Zindabad Force, continue to be banned under the Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act, 1967 (as amended in the year 2004). The BKI and ISYF are also outlawed under the UK Anti-Terrorism Act, 2000. They have also been included in the list of terrorist organisations by the European Union.
Some remnants of the Sikh terrorists felt their presence outside the State. Furthermore, there remain a handful of terrorist groups, primarily backed by Pakistan and by some non-resident Indian Sikh groups based in the West, who continue to propagate the ideology of Khalistan. The Union Minister of State for Home, Sriprakash Jaiswal, said in the Upper House of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) on July 26, 2006 that pro-Khalistani elements are making attempts to revive militancy in Punjab.
Explosions at two cinema halls in the national capital Delhi and the acquittal of Sikh militants in Canada in connection with the 1985 Air India bombing revived memories of Punjab's violent separatist movement that had peaked in the 1980s.
On March 16, 2005, a Vancouver court found millionaire Sikh businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik and sawmill worker Ajaib Singh Bagri not guilty of conspiracy and murder in the Kanishka bombing of June 23, 1985 that killed 329 people. The men were also acquitted on charges related to a separate bomb that killed two Japanese baggage handlers the same day at Tokyo's Narita airport. Flight 182 blew up in mid-air over the Atlantic Ocean off the Irish coast on June 23, 1985 while it was traveling from Canada to India, killing 329 people. The judge said the prosecution, which alleged that Malik and Bagri were seeking to punish India for its crackdown on Sikhs, had failed to prove its case. The prosecutors had reportedly taken 13 months to present evidence, after a 15-year investigation.
On May 22, 2005, two bombs exploded at two cinema halls in Delhi screening the Hindi film Jo Bole So Nihal, which had sparked protests from Sikh groups. One person was killed and at least 60 others sustained injuries in the blasts. In the first incident at Liberty Cinema on the G. T. Karnal Road, the device reportedly exploded under a seat in the sixth row and the second bomb exploded at the restroom of Satyam Cinema in Patel Nagar.
On June 8, 2005, Jagtar Singh Hawara, 'operations chief' of the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) in India, who was one of the four inmates who had escaped from Burail Jail in Chandigarh on January 21, 2004, was arrested along with two other accused, Jaspal Singh alias Raja, the prime coordinator in the Cinema Hall bombings - and Vikas Seth, in connection with the May 22, 2005 theatre blasts from the G.T. Karnal Road in Narela Industrial Area of Delhi. Hawara, who is accused of killing Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995, had escaped in 2004 along with two others from the high-security Burail prison in Punjab. These arrests came after another five conspirators had been arrested from hideouts in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. They included Balwinder Singh, who helped plant the bombs, and Jatinder Singh who were taken in by a joint team of the Delhi and Punjab Police at Nawan Shehar in Punjab on May 30; Jagan Nath, a Hindu originally from a village in the Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh, who was tracked down in Madipur, West Delhi on the same day; and Bahadur Singh and Gurdeep Singh, who were arrested from village Mallpur in Nawan Shehar, on June 5.
While Hawara and Jaspal Singh 'masterminded' the operation in India, they were functioning under the direct control of Wadhawa Singh, the BKI 'chief', who continues to enjoy Pakistani hospitality ever since he fled the fighting in Punjab in the late 1980s. The group was coordinated through Satnam Singh Satta Mallian, Wadhawa Singh's son-in-law, propped up by his ISI handlers, who is currently taking advantage of the laxity of German law in Stuttgart, to manage the movement and operations of BKI cadres, who have a presence in several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom. BKI is also active in Canada and USA.
Such attempts have a continuous history since the comprehensive defeat of Khalistani terrorism in 1993, with a cycle of two to four years. Punjab Police sources indicate that over 100 civilians have died in terrorist related violence over the past decade (1995-2005), overwhelmingly in bomb attacks on soft targets, such as public transport, markets, cinema halls, etc. The worst year after the collapse of high intensity terrorism was 1997, when 56 civilians were killed in a rash of bomb blasts between March 14 and July 10. The year 2000 saw at least 18 civilians killed; and 2002, five. The past three years have seen no civilian fatalities in Punjab (the single fatality in year 2005 was in the Cinema Hall Blasts, in Delhi), but there has been a continuous pattern of arrests and seizures of arms and explosives, indicating unrelenting efforts to resuscitate the terror, stifled, on each occasion, by the complete absence of public support, and the immensely improved intelligence capabilities of the Punjab Police. Over 1,000 kilograms of explosive materials have been recovered from terrorist cells in the State in this period, along with a large number of sophisticated weapons including assault rifles and grenade launchers, as well as other equipment, and at least 30 Pakistan-backed 'modules' have been neutralized.
In addition, there were some arrests of terrorists and seizure of arms and ammunition in Punjab during 2005. These include:
November 19: Punjab Police arrested three Pakistan-trained terrorists of the BKI in the Jagroan district and foiled their plan of a major strike in crowded localities in Chandigarh and Delhi. The police seized 1.2 kilogram of RDX, one pencil bomb, 28 detonators, a timer, 55 AK-47 cartridges, 56 Mauser cartridges and four .9 mm cartridges.
November 10: Two Pakistani nationals are arrested from the Jalandhar district along with sensitive documents pertaining to vital Army installations. One was of them was identified as Khurram Shehzad Ali alias Junaid Alam, a resident of Okara in Pakistan.
September 15: Delhi Police neutralised an ISI base in Punjab and arrested an alleged agent who had been tasked to provide shelter to other operatives. According to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch), Tajendra Luthra, the agent, identified as Mohammed Ramzan, was arrested from Malerkotla in the Sangrur district for providing shelter and secret information relating to the Ambala cantonment to another ISI agent, Irfan Kausar, who was arrested earlier on September 7 from New Delhi.
September 15: Delhi Police neutralised an ISI base at Malerkotla in the Sangrur district and arrested Mohammed Ramzan, an alleged agent, who had been tasked to provide shelter to other operatives.
July 17: Police arrested three BKI terrorists near Madhopur Chowk in the Fatehgarh Sahab district of Punjab. One AK-47 rifle, 25 live cartridges and some explosives are recovered from them.
July 14: Two BKI terrorists are arrested by the Delhi Police from the Old Delhi railway station in connection with the May 22 blasts at two cinema halls. The terrorists are identified as Dilbagh Singh, a close relative of the Pakistan-based BKI chief Wadhawa Singh, and Surender Singh Kanda, a Kenya-based non-resident Indian, who reportedly worked as a visa agent.
June 25: A BKI activist, Tarsem Singh, allegedly a ‘human bomb’ who was planning to target Ashutosh Maharaj, the head of a religious sect, is arrested from Butala.
June 18: A BKI activist, Ashwani Dadwal alias Jangali, is arrested from the Hoshiarpur district along with one kg of RDX and two detonators.
June 16: The Punjab Police arrested two close associates of Jagtar Singh Hawara from the Ropar district. Swarn Singh and Paramjit Singh alias Bhola were arrested along with 10 kg of RDX, a detonating device switch, 10 PE3A gelatin sticks, two infusion sticks, nine ABCD timers, four highly sophisticated grenades, nine clap switches, one live bomb and two .25 mm Chinese made pistol.
June 12: Five persons, Ajaib Singh, Charanjit Kaur, Amit Marwah, Balwinder Singh and Sukhwinder Singh, were arrested for having links with Jagtar Singh Hawara. 20 electrical detonators, 30 mechanical detonators, four batteries, nine belts, eight bomb connections, an ABCD timer, eight bomb coils along with a timer bomb with maximum limit adjustment of 72 hours and more than thousand live cartridges were recovered from their possession.
June 8: Jagtar Singh Hawara, 'operations chief' of the BKI in India, was arrested along with two other accused in the May 22, bomb blasts from the G.T. Karnal Road in Narela Industrial Area of Delhi.
June 5: A joint team of the Delhi and Punjab Police arrested two BKI activists from Nawanshahar district in Punjab. Bahadur Singh and Gurdip Singh alias Kaka were arrested during raids on their houses at Malpur village and both were associates of Jaspal, an accused in the May 22 cinema hall blasts in Delhi. Two slabs of RDX weighing one kilogram, 11 detonators and cordex wires were recovered from the arrested activists.
May 31: Two BKI terrorists were arrested in connection with the May 22-bomb blasts at two cinema halls in the national capital New Delhi. While Balwinder Singh was arrested from a village at Nawanshahar in Punjab, the other accused, Jagannath, was arrested from Madipur in Delhi. Rupees 2.94 lakh in cash, a kilogram of RDX and two kilograms of gold was recovered from the latter's house.
According to the Punjab Police, the overall law and order situation in the State remained under control in 2005 and revival efforts by Pakistan-based terrorists and their allies elsewhere were successfully neutralised. Police operations targeting the BKI and other Sikh terrorists led to the arrest of 66 terrorists and seizure of arms and ammunition. Weapons were coming into Punjab through the porous Jammu border. According to sources in Punjab Police, arms and ammunition recovered in Punjab is similar to the ones used in Jammu and Kashmir.
Sources indicate that there have been renewed attempts by Pakistan to revive terrorism in Punjab through its external intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Official sources insist that outfits like the Khalistan Commando Force–Panjwar, Babbar Khalsa International, Khalistan Zindabad Force and International Sikh Youth Federation continue to find favour with the ISI in its efforts to revive the Khalistan movement. Terrorists from these groups and from the Dal Khalsa are among the 35 most-wanted persons who India has asked Pakistan to extradite. The five who are currently based in Pakistan are:
Gajinder Singh alias Gajinder Singh Khalsa, a leader of the Dal Khalsa.
Lakhbir Singh alias Singh Lakhbir Rode alias Singh Lakhbir, leader of ISYF (Rode).
Paramjit Singh Panjwar alias Paramjit Pamma alias Gian Singh, leader of Khalistan Commando Force (Panjwar).
Ranjit Singh alias Manpreet Singh alias Neeta, leader of Khalistan Commando Force.
Wadhawa Singh, leader of the Babbar Khalsa International.
In addition, a number of Khalistani groups maintain a significant presence in several Western countries. They include the BKI, KZF, KCF-Panjwar, Khalistan National Army, Kamagata Maru Dal of Khalistan, Sikh Youth of Belgium, ISYF, the Council of Khalistan, Sikh Youth of America, and the Sikh Affairs Committee. Their efforts are closely coordinated by the ISI, and though these groups have not engaged in violence in these countries in recent times, they continue to provide critical support in terms of funding, propaganda, logistical coordination and recruitment. Several young men based in these countries have undergone training in Pakistan in the handling of sophisticated weapons and explosives, with the understanding that their 'services' may be called for at an appropriate time.
In addition to the BKI, among the relatively active of these groups in recent times has been Ranjit Singh Neeta's KZF, which has been responsible for several incidents of explosions in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). One of the active modules of the KZF was neutralized towards the end of 2004 in district Gurdaspur, leading to a massive recovery of weapons and explosives. The module included two Pakistani nationals - Mohammad Hanif and Abdul Hamid - who had been given Sikh identities.
The ISI has exploited these various groups for a range of other subversive activities as well, including the provision of active assistance to narcotics smuggling and narcotics transportation to various destinations; the distribution of fake currency; and espionage. There have been repeated attempts to forge alliances with Islamist militants active in J&K, but these have, at worst, met with very limited and transient success.
It is abundantly clear that, despite the abject failure of the Khalistan movement, Pakistan continues to maintain and support these various groups in the expectation of future opportunities that may arise out of political circumstances in Punjab, or from predicaments that arise out of transient exigencies, as was the case in the Cinema Hall Blasts in Delhi, which sought to exploit momentary passions whipped up over the film, Jo Bole So Nihal. While the prevailing circumstances in Punjab make any significant revival of the Khalistani terror an extraordinarily remote possibility, a residual capacity to cause local disruption survives, and dovetails with Pakistan's long-term intent in India. As with the many other terrorist, insurgent and subversive movements and groups across India, the Khalistanis can rely on Pakistani support as long as they retain this residual capacity.