Two men radicalised to carry out hate crimes in Punjab arrested: police

Punjab Police today claimed to have arrested two young men who were allegedly radicalised and funded by their foreign-based handlers, including SFJ legal adviser Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, to carry out hate crimes in the state.

Another person has been arrested for allegedly supplying weapons to the two persons - Dharminder Singh alias Commando Singh (21) and Kirpal Singh (26) - to carry out hate crimes on the orders of their handlers, a police spokesperson said.

The arrests came as a US-based Khalistani group affiliated to Sikhs for Justice issued a video threat to Punjab Jail Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa for opposing its "referendum" on creation of a separate homeland for Sikhs, the spokesperson said.

The threat was tweeted by Pannun, apparently in response to Randhawa's reported criticism of the referendum in Canada and the United States.

The minister had said that the people "pitching for Khalistan from their cosy confines were playing with the sentiments of innocent Sikhs in India and they had no knowledge of the reality in Punjab."