By IANS,
Chandigarh : Punjab’s Director General of Police (DGP) P.S. Gill Tuesday said that the sale and use of posters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the man who spearheaded the movement for a separate Sikh state ‘Khalistan’ in the early 1980s, was not vitiating the atmosphere in the border state.
“This is not vitiating the atmosphere in the state,” Gill told media persons here.
The DGP indicated that the sale and use of posters of Bhindranwale, who is regarded as a martyr among radical sections of Sikhs, could not lead to revival of terrorism in the state as had happened between 1981 and 1995.
Bhindranwale was the leader of a heavily armed group of people who had entrenched themselves in the Golden Temple complex, which has the holiest of Sikh shrines Harmandar Sahib inside, in the early 1980s.
He was among those killed in the Indian Army’s Operation Bluestar in June 1984.
In the last couple of years, posters, stickers, pamphlets and T-shirts carrying Bhindranwale’s pictures are being sold openly across Punjab. A large number of vehicles, especially taxis and those driven by youth, carry his posters and stickers.