Sikh extremist shot dead

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 10

Sikh extremist shot dead

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi The Sikh extremist said to have planned the killing of a Punjab leader, Harchand Singh Longowal, two years ago, was shot dead by police on Monday, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Jarnail Singh Halwara, prime suspect in the killing of the man with whom the Prime Minister, Mr

Rajiv Gandhi, reached a political settlement 10 months after his mother, Mrs Indira Gandhi, was shot by her Sikh bodyguards, was killed near Sangrur in southern Punjab along with an accomplice named as Darshan Singh. The agency said police, acting on a tipoff, surrounded the house where the alleged extremists were sleeping. The two

Sikhs were killed during the subsequent exchange of fire but a third man escaped. Two police officers were wounded, one seriously. Six suspects are under arrest and another was killed after the killing of Longowal, but police regarded Jarnail Singh as the brains behind the assassination.

Harchand Singh Longowal, as president of the

Sikh Akali Dal party, reached agreement with Mr Gandhi to end the agitation which had brought an Army attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhdom’s holiest shrine, in June, 1984, and the revenge killing of Mrs Gandhi four months later.

His murder in a Sikh temple on August 20, 1985, led to a renewal of violence in the Punjab.

Chinese talks A Chinese delegation led by the Vice-Premier, Yao Yilin, has arrived in Moscow for talks on Soviet-Chinese economic, commercial, scientific and technical co-operation, said the official Soviet news agency, Tass. Cultural and trade relations between Moscow and Peking have slowly improved in recent years. — Moscow.