PUNJAB WARNS SIKH MILITANTS NOT TO USE M'SIA TO LAUNCH TERROR ATTACKS

By P. Vijian

NEW DELHI, Aug 2 (Bernama) -- The Punjab police have warned Sikh militants
not to use Malaysia as a base to launch terror strikes on India and destabilise
the Commonwealth Games here in October.

Mincing no words, Patiala police chief Senior Superintendent Ranbir Singh
Khatra told the militants that they would not be able to operate on foreign soil
to attack their motherland.

"They (militants) cannot 'remote-control' from Malaysia. We are constantly
gathering information on them. We are on our heels and constantly alert all the
time.

"(On our part) We will use diplomatic channels to detain at least four
suspected Sikh militants who are allegedly hiding in Malaysia.

"We thank the Malaysian Government, we respect Malaysia as a sovereign
state, so we need to channel our investigations through our ministry
(of external affairs).

"We hope the Malaysian Government will cooperate with us to fight
terrorism," he told Bernama in an interview Sunday.

Khatra was responding to media reports that the Malaysian Government had
acknowledged that several Sikh militants, allegedly having links with the
once-lethal Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), could possibly be nesting in the
country.

Based on intellegence inputs, he revealed that three of the suspected Sikh
militants, Harminder Singh, 45, Daljit Singh and Harpreet Singh, both in their
20s, all of whom are from the state of Punjab, were believed to be still in
hiding in Malaysia.

There are no details of the fourth suspect.

To a question, why the outlawed terrorist outfit had chosen Malaysia as
their base, Khatra replied: "Malaysia and Thailand are international tourist
places and they can enter these countries freely.

"From there, they can easily move to Pakistan."

The fragmented KLF group, allegedly given financial backing and training by
a foreign spy agency, was believed to be plotting to create unrest in Delhi
during the games, revealed Punjab police.

Indian security agencies have been on high alert, following the arrest of
Pargat Singh, a suspected KLF militant and bomb-planting specialist, who had
stayed in Malaysia for almost a year, and the discovery of 15kg of RDX from
another Sikh militant last month.

Since the 1980s, the Sikh militant group has waged an armed struggle to
form a separate homeland for the Sikh community in Punjab -- the birthplace of
the Sikh religion.

But in the 1990s, the Punjab police annihilated most of its top hardliner
leaders, forcing the organisation to break-up into smaller groups and operate
from foreign soil.

Under the weakened KLF wing, others like the ultra-Sikh Khalistan Commando
Force and the Khalistan Zindabad Force are said to have linked up with powerful
terrorist groups outside India, to carry out attacks.

-- BERNAMA



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