JALANDHAR: The absconding pro- Khalistan leader Amritpal Singh released another video message on Thursday, teasing authorities with it and saying he won't surrender.
The Waris Punjab De chief Amritpal, by some accounts, had evaded capture on the night of March 28 in Punjab's Hoshiarpur during a chase by cops after aides alerted them about a barricade ahead. He and his companion Papalpreet Singh reportedly ditched the Toyota Innova car they were travelling in, near a gurdwara at Marnaian Kalan village.
Amritpal says in the video, "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.”
The fugitive Amritpal said he had to walk 20-22 miles every day, sometimes having just a single meal and having nothing at all at others.
He further said, "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.”
In the new video, made on Thursday, he applied pressure on Akal Takht ‘jathedar’ Giani Harpreet Singh to convene a Sarbat Khalsa on Baisakhi. He made a similar request in a clip released the day before.
Information about Amritpal's latest movements was extracted by Punjab police from two men travelling in a lookout vehicle ahead of the Innova. They allegedly informed the cops that the fugitives had travelled from Lakhimpur Kheri, re-entering their home state of Punjab on March 26. Cops also claimed to have found the car that transported the fugitives from Lakhimpur Kheri to a dera near Phagwara.
"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.
According to sources, a counter-intelligence wing team on the lookout for the Innova spotted four people inside. They found the abandoned car, which yielded a collection of clothes during a search, giving weight to the suspicion that Amritpal was frequently changing his guise.
Amritpal went on the run since a concerted Punjab police crackdown on him and people associated with the Waris Punjab De group he leads. The 30-year-old religious leader has given police the slip in Punjab as well as in Haryana and Delhi where he was allegedly spotted. A March 21 CCTV footage, which went viral, 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. Police suspect that he probably used one of his aides’ phone to make the video. In the clip, he urged the jathedar to convene a Sarbat Khalsa at Damdama Sahib this Baisakhi and "take a very tough stand" against the crackdown. Amritpal reiterated on Thursday his call to the jathedar for convening a Sarbat Khalsa.
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