Amritpal Singh, a separatist who had been on the run for over a month, was arrested by the Punjab Police this morning. Singh’s wife, Kirandeep Kaur, who is a UK national currently residing in India, was placed under surveillance by the police since her husband went underground in March. Singh feared that if he fled the country, his wife would be arrested and blamed for his escape. He wanted her to leave the country first so she would be safe. Kaur was recently stopped at the Amritsar airport while trying to board a flight to London.
Since his supporters stormed a police station on March 6 to free one of their own, Amritpal Singh had been moving between four states — Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi — to evade police capture. He was arrested following an overnight operation, during which the police cordoned off Rode village in Moga district, where he had been hiding since Friday. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann personally monitored the operation, and the village was completely sealed off to prevent his escape.
Amritpal Singh was routing funds for his operations through his wife, who parked them in the UK. In an interview with ‘The Week,’ Kaur had said that her family was from Jalandhar, and her grandfather moved to the UK in 1951. She got in touch with Amritpal Singh through Instagram, and they were married on February 11, days before his supporters attacked the Ajnala Police Station to free his aide Toofan Singh.
Intelligence agencies say that Amritpal Singh has been trying to divide Punjab on communal lines by sourcing weapons from Pakistan through its spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence. He is a follower of Khalistani terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and is known as ‘Bhindranwale 2.0’ among his supporters. He has been taken to Assam’s Dibrugarh jail, where eight of his aides are already being held under the National Security Act.
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