Amritpal Singh's 'larger than life' aura gone, says Jalandhar DIG

Tribune News Service

Aparna Banerji

Nakodar, March 19

DIG Jalandhar Range Swapan Sharma today said Amritpal Singh was spreading anti-India sentiment and his aura had been broken with the slew of arrests of his aides. The DIG said the search for Amritpal Singh was on and he would be nabbed soon.

Will catch him soon

There was an aura around Amritpal; with the operation, it has broken. He was influencing youths and was trying to spread anti-India, anti-national sentiment. Jaldi mil jayega (he’ll be arrested soon). Swapan Sharma, DIG Jalandhar Range

Interacting with mediapersons today on the sidelines of a flag march at Nakodar, the DIG said: “There was an aura around Amritpal; with the operation, it has broken. He was influencing youths and trying to spread anti-India sentiment. Jaldi mil jayega. We are also looking into all available footage. We are into it.”

On the second day of the crackdown on preacher Amritpal Singh and his aides, the demeanour of the police remained much relaxed compared to the evasiveness of key officials yesterday. Today they mingled with the mediaperons and took a volley of questions and held flag marches across several areas of the district. Ahead of the flag march at the DSP office in Nakodar, officials monitored news on a flat screen TV, playing screen grabs of the viral video of a fleeing Amritpal.

The video, officials tacitly remarked, goes to show that Amritpal wasn’t all brawn and courage, as was earlier being deemed by many. Flag marches were held in Jalandhar (city), Nakodar, Shahkot and Mehatpur among other areas.

The DIG and the SSP took questions patiently, much like a similarly relaxed Commissioner of Police, Jalandhar, Kuldeep Singh Chahal had taken hours ago on the sidelines of another flag march in the Model Town area of Jalandhar this morning.

As per the police, one of the reasons the Waris Punjab De chief got away was that he was driving hi-tech vehicles, more sophisticated than the ones with the police. Jalandhar SSP Swarandeep Singh said, “Amritpal Singh was in a Mercedes and police teams were in a Scorpio. The abandoned Isuzu recovered from Salema village in Mehatpur is most likely the car which was used by Amritpal during the chase. We are on the lookout for the Mercedes used by him.”

Meanwhile, the DIG remained evasive on questions regarding the involvement of Central agencies in the Amritpal case. He also maintained that Amritpal Singh hadn’t been booked under the National Security Act. While seven of Amritpal Singh’s associates had been arrested yesterday following a seven to eight-hour-long car chase, four of them had been flown by aircraft to a jail in Dibrugarh in Assam today.

Despite the now extended ban on the Internet for another day, the police said the marches were being held to restore a sense of normalcy. They said the situation is peaceful and everything is under control.