By Murali Krishnan
New Delhi : The remnants of Sikh separatists hiding in Punjab or living abroad are under increasing pressure from Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency to rekindle terrorism in the border state, say Indian counter-terrorism officials and security experts.
Intelligence agencies say the demands posed by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan was sowing desperation within the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) activists who were attempting to come overground.
“Despite their (militants) shrinking base, limited resources and the near absence of public support for militancy, terror coordinators within the country and abroad are trying to rope in their old associates and those released from jails as well as family members of dead militants,” said a highly placed source who preferred to remain unidentified for security reasons.
The comments follow National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan’s assertion this week that Pakistan was trying to foment militancy again in Punjab where a radical Sikh homeland campaign left some 25,000 people dead during a decade ending in 1993.
Narayanan’s comments came after an explosion ripped through a crowded cinema hall in Ludhiana Oct 14, killing seven people and injuring dozens in the first major act of terrorism in years in the state.
Senior intelligence officials told IANS that interrogations of arrested Punjab militants showed they were under constant pressure from ISI to show results and revive terrorism in the sensitive state that borders Pakistan.
More than a dozen of the ‘most wanted’ Punjab militants are known to have fled India and several of them have reportedly sought refuge in Pakistan. These include Wadhawa Singh Babbar, the BKI chief, Ranjith Singh Neeta, chief of Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF) and Paramjeet Singh Panjawar, who heads the Khalistan Commando Force. All of them are believed to be in Lahore.
“There are reports that the Punjab militants have maintained close association with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Al Burq and the Jammu Kashmir Islamic Front,” said a senior intelligence official.
Some reports suggest that leaders of the Khalistan Liberation Front (KLF) and BKI had three years back tied up with Uttar Pradesh-based crime gangs to carry out kidnappings in order to raise funds for the now defunct Khalistan movement.
Jagtar Singh Hawara, a BKI leader who reportedly masterminded the twin bomb blasts in cinema theatres in New Delhi in May 2005 and was arrested, has maintained contacts with members of the organisation in Germany.
“There are certainly some diehard elements from Punjab groups who are very much around. Not all elements have been eliminated. There are certain people left behinds and one has to be vigilant,” former Intelligence Bureau chief Arun Bhagat told IANS.
“They still have the expertise and it requires just two or perhaps three people to organise an operation like the Ludhiana blast,” he added.
Former Punjab police chief K.P.S. Gill, credited with wiping out the Khalistan separatist movement, has blamed BKI cells for the Ludhiana strike.
“They (Punjab militants) are trying to reactivate themselves in Punjab. They still have their links in Pakistan and also with other terrorist outfits,” Gill said, pointing out that the Punjab explosion came in the wake of the bomb blast at the Sufi shrine at Ajmer in Rajasthan that killed three people.
A.S. Dulat, a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency, had a different take on the Ludhiana blasts.
“I agree that Narayanan must be taken seriously because he has inputs from all agencies but we must not be under the impression that militancy is going to rear its ugly head again in Punjab,” Dulat told IANS.
“There is no support whatsoever for militancy in the state. So we must look hard at who could be responsible for this terror act,” said Dulat, now a member of the National Security Advisory Board.