Khalistani groups involved, says minister

3 PEOPLE WERE KILLED WHEN TWO MASKED MEN LOBBED A GRENADE INTO THE PRAYER HALL IN NOV LAST YEAR

NEWDELHI: The Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) and the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) were involved in the November 2018 grenade attack at a weekly congregation of the Nirankari sect in Punjab’s Amritsar district, Parliament was told on Tuesday.

Minister of state for home affairs Hansraj Gangaram Ahir told the Lok Sabha in a written reply that Punjab Police has arrested two persons in the case so far and filed a case against three other persons residing abroad. “Open dated warrants of arrest have been procured in their cases,” Ahir told Communist Party of India-Marxist’s Anirudhan Sampath.

Two masked men came on a motorcycle to the Nirankari congregation at Adliwal village on the outskirts of Amritsar on November 18, 2018. Forcing their way in by brandishing a pistol, they lobbed a grenade into the prayer hall killing three people and injuring 20. Ahir also said that in order to avert terror incidents in the country, there was a close and effective coordination mechanism between intelligence and security agencies at the Centre and the state level.

“A multi-agency centre has been strengthened and re-organised to enable it to function on a 24x7 basis for real time collation and sharing of intelligence with other agencies and state governments,” he said. With a view to enhance the capacity of state forces, the Central agencies have been conducting training programmes for the states’ forces to collect, collate, analyse and disseminate intelligence from a counter-terrorism perspective and investigate terror cases, Ahir added.