Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh surrenders to police after month-long hunt

Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh has surrendered to police, after more than a month on the run, and he was subsequently arrested by police in a move seen as a government response against the revival of an independent homeland in the state of Punjab bordering Pakistan.

The rise of Singh, a preacher in the northwestern state of Punjab where Sikhs are in the majority, has revived talk of an independent Sikh homeland and stoked fears of a return to violence that killed tens of thousands of people in the 1980s and early 1990 s during a Sikh insurgency.

"Amritpal Singh has been arrested from the Rode village in Moga district, Punjab on the basis of specific intelligence," Sukhchain Singh Gill, a top official of the Punjab police told reporters on Sunday.

Supporters of Singh, however, insisted that he voluntarily gave himself up to authorities.

A Sikh religious leader, Jasbir Singh Rodde, said Singh surrendered to police after offering morning prayers at a Sikh shrine in Moga.

The arrest of Singh, 30 - who leads a group called Waris Punjab De (the heirs of Punjab) - comes after the self-styled preacher and hundreds of his supporters stormed a police station with swords and firearms, demanding the release of one of his aides.

Police have accused Singh and his supporters of attempted murder, obstruction of law enforcement, and creating disharmony, and said he had been on the run since mid-March.

He was detained in the village of Gurudwara, a Sikh temple, under the National Security Act, which allows for those deemed a threat to national security to be detained without charge for up to a year, the police official said.

Gill said he would be moved to Dibrugarh, in the state of Assam, where some of his associates are already in jail.

Singh 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.

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