Amritpal Singh 'won't surrender', pushes for Sarbat Khalsa

JALANDHAR: Fugitive Khalistan sympathiser Amritpal Singh teased authorities with another video message Thursday, saying he won't surrender. He is said to have evaded capture on the night of March 28 in Hoshiarpur where he and his aide Papalpreet ditched their Innova near a gurdwara at Marnaian Kalan village during a police chase after being alerted by his aides about a barricade. "Don't consider everything a conspiracy and have trust in the Guru's will. If he helped me to escape, then it is for a bigger purpose. I am neither a renegade nor afraid of death," he said. "Soon I shall come before people and move among them. I am not among those who would escape from the country," he said.
Amritpal 'won't surrender', pushes for Sarbat Khalsa
Fugitive Khalistan sympathiser Amritpal Singh teased authorities with another video message Thursday, saying he won't surrender. He is said to have evaded capture on the night of March 28 in Punjab's Hoshiarpur where he and his companion Papalpreet Singh ditched their getaway Toyota Innova car near a gurdwara at Marnaian Kalan village during a chase by cops after aides alerted them about a barricade ahead.
"Don't consider everything a conspiracy and have trust in the Guru's will. If he helped me escape, it is for a bigger purpose. I am neither a renegade nor afraid of death," he said.
Amritpal said he had to walk 20-22 miles every day, sometimes making-do with a single meal or nothing at all. "Soon I shall come before people and move among them. I am not among those who would escape from the country as some people were suggesting," he said. In the new video, he piled pressure on Akal Takht jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh to convene a Sarbat Khalsa on Baisakhi - a request he made in a clip released the day before.
Punjab police sources said they extracted information about Amritpal's latest movements from two men travelling in a lookout vehicle ahead of the Innova. They allegedly told the cops that the runaways had travelled from Lakhimpur Kheri and re-entered their home state on March 26. Cops also claimed to have found the car that transported the fugitives from Lakhimpur Kheri to a dera near Phagwara, a distance of 750km.
"They spent the night there and took off in an Innova to another dera in Nadalon village of Hoshiarpur the next day," a police source said.
After lying low there until nightfall on March 28, they were again on the road to Phagwara. "That's when a police team chased them (on the Hoshiarpur-Phagwara road). They escaped once again after the vehicle ahead of them was stopped at a police naka," the police source said.
The sources said a counter-intelligence wing team chasing the Innova spotted four people inside. The abandoned car yielded a collection of clothes during a search, giving weight to the suspicion that Amritpal was frequently changing his guise. Police had scoured each and every house and fields in and around Marnaian Kalan village, but he had vanished.
Amritpal has been on the run since a sweeping Punjab police crackdown on him and people associated with the Waris Punjab De group he leads. The 30-year-old preacher has given police the slip in Punjab as well as in Haryana and Delhi where he was allegedly seen. CCTV footage from March 21 showed two men resembling the fugitives walking in an east Delhi market.
Police suspect Amritpal uploaded a video on social media on Wednesday at the dera in Nadalon village. "He probably used a phone of one of his aides (to make the video)," said the police source.
He urged the jathedar to convene a Sarbat Khalsa at Damdama Sahib this Baisakhi and "take a very tough stand" against the crackdown. "If he does not give this call, it is a test for him to prove if he is sincere. He faces allegations that he is supporting a family's politics," Amritpal said on Thursday.