Sikh extremists still active abroad: Indian PM
AMRITSAR, India (AFP) — Remnants of Sikh rebel groups abroad are helping attempts to revive an insurgency in India's northern state of Punjab, the country's prime minister warned in a letter obtained Wednesday.
In a letter to the guardians of Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said die-hard separatists were recieving support from sympathisers living overseas.
"The government and our agencies have credible information of efforts being made by extremist groups to revive militancy in Punjab," the premier said in the letter, a copy of which was made available to AFP.
"Much of this is concentrated in countries abroad like the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and especially Pakistan, where such groups receive a great deal of encouragement from remnants of extremist groups as well as support from other hostile forces," he wrote.
Singh was responding to an appeal for a review of an official "blacklist" of most-wanted insurgents who fled India at the peak of the insurgency in Punjab.
An armed rebellion for a Sikh homeland called Khalistan -- or land of the pure -- erupted in 1983 and waned in the early 1990s.
About 50,000 people died in the conflict, which India blamed on arch-rival Pakistan at the time.
The prime minister, himself a Sikh, said however that New Delhi had "adopted a very enlightened policy" in regard to some of those who were blacklisted.
