India arrests Sikh separatist after major hunt

Indian police arrested on Sunday a firebrand Sikh separatist after a manhunt lasting more than a month that sparked protests and vandalism among the diaspora in Britain, Canada and the United States.

Amritpal Singh rose to fame calling for the creation of a separate Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, the struggle for which sparked deadly violence in India in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Police said they arrested Singh at around 6:45am (0115 GMT), having surrounded a village in the northern state of Punjab following intelligence that he was there in a gurdwara, or Sikh temple.

"Once he got the message that he had no escape route and he was surrounded, he was arrested," senior police official Sukhchain Singh Gill told reporters.

Amritpal Singh (centre) stands outside a house on Jan.7, 2023. File/AP

Singh, 30, styles himself on Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a figurehead of the Khalistan movement killed when the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, a major Sikh site, in 1984.

He sports a similarly styled blue turban and long beard and reportedly travelled to the former Soviet republic of Georgia last year for cosmetic surgery to look more like his hero.

Singh and his 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 then tried to arrest Singh, but he dramatically escaped, reportedly on a motorbike after changing clothes at a gurdwara.

Deploying thousands of officers in the manhunt, authorities cut off mobile internet for days in the Sikh-majority northern state of 30 million people in their search.

They arrested more than 100 of his followers, transferring them to jails hundreds of miles away, and banned gatherings of more than four people in some areas.