Chandigarh: Two cousins from Rajpura town in Patiala district, who were among the 116 illegal immigrants in the second batch deported by US in a military aircraft that landed at the Amritsar airport late Saturday night, were arrested by Punjab police immediately upon landing from the airport in connection with a murder case.
Punjab police said that the accused duo Sandeep Singh and Pradeep Singh were wanted in a murder case registered in 2023. Stating that the case was registered in Rajpura in June, 2023, police said that the names of Pradeep and Sandeep were added in the FIR during the investigation and had been declared proclaimed offenders (POs).
Both the accused were arrested from Sri Guru Ramdas airport, Amritsar, immediately upon landing, by a police team which had come from Rajpura.
It may be recalled that the second lot of 116 deportees which landed in Amritsar included 67 from Punjab and 33 from Haryana and remaining from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir – landed on Saturday night. The first batch of 104 Indian deportees was sent by the US on February 5.
WE WERE HANDCUFFED: DEPORTEES
Like in the first batch, the deportees were also handcuffed during the flight in the second batch. Several of them including Daljit Singh, from a village in Hoshiarpur, claimed that the deportees were handcuffed and their legs chained during the journey due to which they faced difficulty in their movement and even eating.
The Sikh deportees also claimed that they were made to remove their turbans before they boarded the US military aircraft. According to media reports there were around 24 Sikhs in the said flight.
They were provided ``patkas’’ and ``parnas’’ to cover their heads by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) members at the Amritsar airport where the SGPC runs a special to assist the travellers who wish to visit Golden temple on their arrival to Amritsar.
The SGPC secretary Partap Singh said that the US authorities had not only handcuffed and chained the deportees but had violated the fundamental religious rights of and hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by removing their turbans.
