Amritsar attack has signature of Pak: Amarinder

AMRITSAR: Investigators stayed away from making any statements on the identity of the people or groups behind the grenade attack at the Amritsar’s Nirankari Bhawan but Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh said on Monday that it seemed to carry Pakistan’s signature, adding that the initial investigations indicated that the grenade used was similar to the ones made by the Pakistani Army Ordnance factory.

Functionaries of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat – an offshoot of the RSS, the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which works with the Sikh community has cautioned that there is an attempt to stoke disturbance in the state by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

The chief minister also dismissed the possibility of the attack being a replay of the decades-old Nirankari-sikh conflict, as some have speculated. A team from the National Investigation Agency visited the site of the attack on Monday, as per the standard operating procedure that applies in all terror-related investigations. “The case is yet to be handed over to the NIA,” said an agency official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He added that the possibility of a new module backed by the Pakistani spy agency, ISI, through Khalistani sympathisers based outside the country cannot be ruled out. A central counter-terrorism official drew parallels with a similar attack on a police station in Maqsudan of Jalandhar district in September this year.

CONTINUED ON P 12 ››RELATED REPORT, P11