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Police arrest top Sikh rebel, cinema blasts suspect
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-08 17:34

Police in New Delhi on Wednesday arrested three men, including a top Sikh militant and the main accused in the bombing of two cinemas last month that killed one person and wounded dozens.

The men are members of Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa, which wants an independent Sikh state, a police spokesman said.

The arrests in a Delhi suburb took the number of people held over the May 22 blasts to eight.

"Jagtar Singh Hawara is the head of Babbar Khalsa and there was a price of 500,000 rupees for his arrest. He is wanted for the assassination of Beant Singh among other cases," the spokesman said.

Singh was chief minister of Punjab, the Sikh heartland, when he was killed in 1995 by a bomb planted in his chauffeur-driven car. Hawara was arrested that year but he and three other men tunnelled their way out of a high-security prison in Punjab last year.

Another of those arrested on Wednesday was the mastermind behind the home-made bomb blasts that tore through the cinemas in Delhi, the spokesman said.

"We suspect they were in Delhi to collect some money and flee the country. Some guns and a huge amount of explosives were recovered from them," he added.

No group has claimed responsibility for the cinema blasts on the first anniversary of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. Singh is India's first Sikh prime minister.

Although the Sikh separatist movement, which was at its peak in the 1980s and early 1990s, has now all but disappeared, some Sikh militant groups remain active, security experts say.



 
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