Will notify Amritpal of grounds of detention on Wednesday: Punjab tells HC
The fresh detention order was passed by the Amritsar district magistrate on April 17 and given to the MP on April 18
The Punjab government on Tuesday told the Punjab and Haryana high court that a fresh detention order under the National Security Act (NSA) has been passed against the Khadoor Sahib MP, and the grounds for the same would be supplied to him on Wednesday.
Senior advocate Anupam Gupta told the high court bench of chief justice Sheel Nagu and justice Sumeet Goel that the fresh detention order was passed by the Amritsar district magistrate on April 17 and given to the MP on April 18.
“His detention ends on April 22. Hence, the grounds for his fresh detention order are to be provided to him, an exercise to be carried out by the government on April 23,” he said. Gupta has been specially appointed by the state government in this case.
The court was hearing a clutch of petitions filed by Amritpal Singh and his associates, who had challenged the NSA detention order passed by the Punjab in April 2024. The proceedings of this case are still before the high court. The MP will now have to challenge the fresh detention order before the court.
Amritpal has been under detention at Dibrugarh jail since his arrest in April 2023. However, his nine associates, also detained in 2023, were brought back to Punjab earlier this month after the government decided not to extend their detention under the NSA.
They are now in the custody of Punjab Police and being probed for various other FIRs.
Amritpal, who styled himself after slain Khalistani militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, was arrested in Moga’s Rode village on April 23, 2023, following an over a month-long manhunt.
The Khalistan sympathiser had escaped the police net in Jalandhar district on March 18, 2023, switching vehicles and changing appearances. The Punjab Police had launched the crackdown after the February 23, 2023, Ajnala incident in which Amritpal and his supporters, some of them brandishing swords and guns, allegedly broke through barricades and barged into the police station on the outskirts of Amritsar city, and clashed with police for the release of his aides.
