ROPAR, JULY 23 Some are college dropouts desperate to join the teeming Sikh workforce abroad. Others are petty criminals. A few are disabled youths. This motley bunch, along with five ‘‘committed militants,’’ forms a group of 70 men now lodged in prisons and police stations in Delhi and Punjab. They are seen by the security establishment as the new face of the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI).
In hibernation for over a decade after the end of Punjab militancy, the BKI jumped back on the internal security radar after the bomb attacks on two New Delhi cinema halls on May 22. The BKI was once the face of terror in India, much as Lashkar is now.
The revival of its terror network, its stockpile of smuggled arms and ammunition collected over a year and only now being unveiled poses the most serious threat to peace of Punjab in over a decade.
Admits Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh: ‘‘This is a serious attempt of the Babbar Khalsa at getting reorganised. I have briefed the Prime Minister about the situation and asked for the Centre’s assistance in getting details of smuggling of arms across the border and increased infiltration from places like Ajanala.’’
The Sunday Express toured districts in Punjab, suddenly in the news for the number of BKI operatives picked up in recent police raids, men described, perhaps, over-enthusiastically in local newspapers as ‘‘human bombs’’. And as they stepped out of interrogation chambers to tell their tales, the stark shift in the pattern of BKI’s terror recruitment — from the earlier base of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha — was evident.
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