NEW DELHI – A new brand of Sikh movement has surfaced in Punjab — educated,suave, clean shaven and mostly millennial young men and women from familieswith no links to the pro-Khalistan movement, according to police.
Radicalised through social media by Khalistani groups active abroad, theseyoung Sikhs are recruited to kill specific targets set by their handlers,said police after busting several modules behind “targeted killings” inPunjab last year.
“It’s a new way of spreading militancy. Pro-Khalistani forces areradicalising people using cyber space… That’s why we handed the probe intoall such cases to the National Investigation Agency (NIA),” state directorgeneral of police Suresh Arora said. “You never know how many such modulesthey have prepared for anti-national activities.”
The alarm rang after police arrested five men who are said to be part of amodule that had shot dead Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) members inLudhiana, Dera Sacha Sauda followers and a Christian pastor between October31 and November 7, 2017.
These new-age militants have no trace of any Khalistani activity in atleast three generations of their families. None of them is from householdsthat suffered the worst during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. They also have nolinks to “victims” of Punjab’s violent insurgency in the 1980s and early1990s.
These militants weren’t even born when the riots happened after theassassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards onOctober 31, 1984. About 3,000 people were killed in the violence, mostly inNew Delhi.
In one module busted this August, police found an 18-year-old Ludhiana girlallegedly brainwashed through Facebook by fundamentalists in Canada andincited to kill Hindu leaders.
Of the 45 suspects arrested so far from different modules, at least 20 arebelow 35. They are tech and social media savvy. The men have short hair andare clean shaven, though keeping a beard and growing long hair are amongthe basic tenets of Sikhism.