India arrests 78 in manhunt for Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh

A MANHUNT for a radical Sikh preacher in India entered its second day on Sunday (19), after authorities shut mobile internet in the whole of Punjab state and arrested 78 of his supporters.

Amritpal Singh rose to prominence in recent months demanding the creation of Khalistan, a separate Sikh homeland, and with his hardline interpretation of Sikhism at rallies in rural pockets of the northern state of some 30 million people.

Last month Singh, 30, and his supporters armed with swords, knives and guns raided a police station after one of his aides was arrested for alleged assault and attempted kidnapping.

The brazen daytime raid in the outskirts of Amritsar left several police injured and heaped pressure on authorities to act against Singh.

After the operation began on Saturday (18), Punjab police tweeted late in the day that 78 had been arrested in the "mega crackdown".

But Singh himself was not thought to be among them.

On Sunday, there was a major police presence across Punjab, especially in rural pockets and around Singh's village of Jallupur Khera, local media reported.

The police said that its "manhunt" was ongoing and the overall "situation is under control, citizens (are) requested to not believe in rumours".

Local media reports said that the Punjab government ordered the mobile internet shutdown to be in place until noon (0630 GMT) on Monday (20).

Punjab - with about 58 per cent Sikhs and 39 per cent Hindus -- was rocked by a violent separatist movement for Khalistan in the 1980s and early 1990s when thousands of people died.

The violence peaked in 1984 after a botched raid against a few hundred radical separatists, some of them armed, inside the Golden Temple headed by the hardline Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

This led to the assassination of India's prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh security guards a few months later, which in turn sparked anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and elsewhere that left several thousand more people dead.

The separatist movement later lost a lot of support, with its most vocal advocates today primarily among the Punjabi diaspora in Canada, Australia, Britain and elsewhere.

(AFP)