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Indian police have arrested Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh after searching for him for more than a month.
The rise of Singh – a preacher in the northwestern state of Punjab, where Sikhs are the majority – has revived talk of such a homeland and stoked fears of a return to violence of the 1980s and early 1990s.
“Amritpal Singh has been arrested from the Rode village in Moga district, Punjab, on the basis of specific intelligence,” Sukhchain Singh Gill, a top official in the Punjab police said
Singh and supporters armed with swords, knives and guns raided a police station in February after one of the preacher’s aides was arrested for assault and attempted kidnapping.
Authorities deployed thousands of officers in the manhunt and cut off mobile internet for days in Punjab, a state of 30 million people.
They arrested more than 100 of his followers, transferring them to jails hundreds of kilometres away, and banned gatherings of more than four people in some areas, Al Jazeera reported.
Police have accused Singh and his supporters of attempted murder, obstruction of law enforcement and creating disharmony and said he had been on the run since mid-March.
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He was arrested in the village gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, under the National Security Act, which allows for those considered a threat to national security to be detained without charge for up to a year, the police official said.
Gill said Singh would be moved to Dibrugarh in the northeastern state of Assam, where some of his associates are already in jail.
