'Gurmeet Ram Rahim's political clout inhibited the chief minister, affected the bureaucracy and restricted the police.'
At least 25 people, including two children, were killed and over 50 injured when a suspected suicide bomber struck a religious gathering in Dera Ghazi Khan town in Pakistan's Punjab province on Thursday.
One of the six suspects, detained in connection with the attack on two visiting Indian Sikh preachers in Vienna in May, has been released due to lack of evidence. Three other suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the attack in which Dera Sacha Khand leader Guru Ramandand Dass was killed and Sant Niranjan Dass was severely injured, will remain in custody for the time being, while a decision on two other suspects would be taken next week, police said.
Sant Rama Nand, the head of a Dera sect, died early on Monday morning after being shot in a clash between two groups of Sikh worshippers at a gurdwara in Vienna.At least 11 people, including Sant Niranjan Dass, another Dera chief, were injured when the two groups clashed with knives and a handgun.The fight erupted following a dispute over the sermon given by a priest from Shri Guru Ravidas Sabha.
A hitherto unknown pro-Taliban group called 'Ansar Wa Mohajir' has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's car bomb attack in Lahore, for which four alleged Indian nationals have reportedly been arrested by Pakistani authorities.
At least 22 people, including five women and two children, were killed and over 60 others injured on Tuesday when a powerful car bomb went off outside the home of a senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader in Punjab province, the latest in a wave of terror attacks in Pakistan that have claimed more than 500 lives since October.
A suicide bomber struck at a hotel in a busy market in the restive North West Frontier Province on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and injuring over 20 others, most of them militants opposed to Pakistan's top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud.The bomber struck at a hotel at the busy Jandola Bazar in Dera Ismail Khan, while scores of anti-Taliban militants were just beginning their meals. They were members of the 'Turkestan Bittani' group.
At least 28 people were killed and nearly 160 injured on Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the funeral procession of a Shia cleric in the north-western Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan on Friday, sparking angry protests which prompted authorities to impose curfew.
Two persons were killed and several injured as violence triggered by the killing of a Dera leader engulfed Punjab and parts of Haryana, where protestors set afire train coaches, buses and clashed with the police, prompting authorities to impose curfew in four cities and calling out the Army in Jalandhar.
Bharti Wal-Mart's plan to open its first cash-and-carry store in the country at Amritsar on Tuesday has been postponed because of law and order problem in Punjab following violence sparked by killing of a Dera leader in Austria. "Due to the situation in Punjab, Bharti Wal-Mart is postponing the launch of its cash-and-carry wholesale store 'Best Price Modern Wholesale'," the company said on Monday.
'Now I will see how you escape...'
Chawla, who is the general secretary of Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and is known to speak for 'Khalistan', had shared the purported picture on his Facebook page.
She also said the Kartarpur corridor initiative was not linked to the dialogue process with Pakistan.
The Pakistan government and Taliban militants in the restive South Waziristan tribal region are expected to swap prisoners as part of efforts for a formal peace agreement. A formal agreement could be reached in three to four days. The swapping of prisoners is expected to take place at Tiarza in South Waziristan, sources said. An official said all of them were members of the Mehsud tribe.
The recent attacks in Pakistan's Punjab should be taken as warning shots of an impending battle which will further destabilise that country and the region.
'Our technology is going to help Indian agriculture the way the White Revolution helped milk production.'
Wal-Mart defers launch of its first Indian store
The babas' vote banks and the politicians' greed for en bloc votes, is the curse of Punjab and Haryana.
Were the thugs not visible to the police team in the Qualis's headlights, alerting the policemen to their presence?
The police on Sunday shifted Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh to an undisclosed destination for "security reasons" amid continued protests over the gunning down of a Sikh demonstrator in Mumbai while radical groups demanded the Dera Sacha Sauda chief's immediate arrest.
Aitezaz Shah, a 15-year-old suicide bomber arrested last week along with one Sher Zaman in Dera Ismail Khan town of North West Frontier Province, was handed over to Punjab Police on Tuesday and brought to Rawalpindi.
Rampal won't walk free as he is facing several other charges including murder.
Khan, who had been detained for a week under anti-terrorism laws, was on a hunger strike demanding the reinstatement of the ousted Supreme Court judges.
Pakistan's northern area bordering Afghanistan has been a haven for foreign Islamist militants who have been engaged in violent activities in different parts of the world, including Afghanistan, Chechnya, China and India.
According to agencies, supporters of a Shi'ite leader, who was shot earlier in the day, were protesting outside a hospital in Dera Ismail Khan town when the blast went off.
high level delegation led by Shiromani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal will visit Mumbai on Tuesday to meet the members of the family of Balkar Singh, who was killed in the incident of firing allegedly by private security guards of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh.
Fifteen-year-old Aitezaz Shah, who was arrested from Dera Ismail Khan town of the North West Frontier Province, identified the bomber as a man named Bilal who belonged to the South Waziristan tribal region, Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah said.A team of investigators has gone to South Waziristan to meet Bilal's family to get more information about him. Reports said that the investigators had shown a photograph of the suspected bomber to Aitezaz Shah, who identified him.
Aitzaz, who was arrested on Friday from Dera Ismail Khan, revealed that he had been asked to attack Benazir in Karachi in the event of her escaping the attack in Rawalpindi, the newspaper Dawn quoted sources as saying. After Bhutto's assassination, Aitzaz was directed to move to Karachi to target the US Consulate, the sources said.
"Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency imparted the training to Gurpreet Singh," said Punjab Director-General of Police N P S Aulakh. Gurpreet Singh and two other suspected Babbar Khalsa militants were arrested near the Indo-Nepal border in Bihar on December 25. Aulakh said that Gurpreet went to Pakistan with a jatha of Sikh pilgrims and he was trained with another terrorist Harminder Singh. Gurpreet returned in mid-2007 to revive the terrorist module in the state.
Major Somnath Sharma was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously for his bravery in the Kashmir operations on November 3, 1947.
A suicide bomber on Tuesday blew himself up in a north-west Pakistani town bordering the restive tribal area, killing at least 10 people and injuring several others.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack but the Taliban usually target shrines as they consider it un-Islamic.
The country's volatile tribal areas were turned into virtual killing fields in three different suicide attacks.
At least 42 people, 27 of them women and children, were killed and 17 others injured on Sunday when a speeding bus they were traveling in collided with a trailer on the National Highway in southeast Pakistan.
the SAD president said that the Prakash Singh Badal government had failed to control the law and order situation in the state, arising out of the Dera Sacha Sauda controversy.
"Congress has always tried to disturb peace in the state whenever it is out of power."
The list includes names like Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, Rampal, Asaram and his son Narayan Sai.
An angry mob attempted to set ablaze Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras in a southwestern Pakistan province over alleged desecration of a holy book in Sindh, local media reported on Monday.
Sidhu said that the corridor would promote peace and erase "enmity" between India and Pakistan and create infinite possibilities between them, including the resumption of cricket ties.
In his apology letter directed to Guru Gobind Singh, the Dera chief had expressed kshama (apology) for his acts as he had never intended to imitate the 10th Guru by dressing up like him, which hurt Sikh sentiments.
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