Bottles hurled, Capt denies it

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 4

Almost two weeks after Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh cancelled his tour of Canada, Sikh radicals raised pro-Khalistan slogans and hurled bottles at the his car while he was leaving a conference venue at Clovis in California last night. He, however, refuted the reports.

As soon as he came out of the conference venue with his supporters, radicals holding banners started raising slogans against him and came in front of his car. The driver of his vehicle took a detour, but they chased him and hurled bottles at them. 

A few hours after the incident, a video uploaded by the Sikhs for Justice went viral on the social media sites.

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun of the Sikhs for Justice said, "One of the victims of 1984 genocide, Mohinder Singh, who tried to enter the venue of the conference to question Amarinder on the involvement of Congress men in the genocide, was not allowed. This ignited a protest."

Recently, the PPCC chief had to cancel his tour of Canada after the Sikhs for Justice, a US-based Sikh rights organisation, moved court demanding his arrest on landing in Toronto. 

Pannun alleged Amarinder accommodated police officers responsible for human rights abuses in Punjab. Rejecting the allegation, Amarinder said, “Presuming for the sake of argument that such incidents took place, why did it take someone more than 10 years to file a complaint and that came while I was planning to visit that country.”

Amarinder Singh, however, termed these reports as rumours. The viciously malicious intentions and motives of those behind spreading these rumours were quite obvious, he said.

The meeting inside the hall was attended by about 1,000 persons and it continued for three hours. It went off very well. A handful of protesters were raising anti-India slogans outside the hall but nobody cared about them. They continued sloganeering when he came out of the venue, he said.

He said certain forces were not comfortable with the overwhelming response that he got from the Punjabi community in the US.