Chandigarh: A Nihang — a 'warrior' Sikh — has been arrested and two others have been detained in connection with the gruesome murder of a Dalit labourer at a farmers protest site in Haryana's Singhu on Thursday.
The suspect was arrested by police in Punjab's Amritsar district. The DSP, or Deputy Superintendent of Police, for Amritsar (Rural) will hold a press conference at 5.30 pm to announce the arrest. Later in the evening, two more Nihangs — Bhagwant Singh and Govind Singh — surrendered to police.
The accused, identified as Parminder Singh, had announced that he would surrender after paying obeisance at Akal Takht.
Meanwhile, a court here in Sonipat on Saturday remanded Sarabjit Singh in police custody for seven days, with the accused pointing to the involvement of a few more people in the gruesome killing.
The body of Lakhbir Singh, a labourer from Punjab's Tarn Taran district, was found on Friday tied to a barricade at the Delhi-Haryana border with a hand chopped off and multiple wounds caused by sharp-edged weapons. The gruesome killing was blamed on a group of Nihangs.
The police had sought Sarabjit's custody for making certain recoveries from him and to arrest the other accused.
The police said that Sarabjit has named four more people during interrogations while pointing to their involvement in the incident.
A police official said that the total number of accused could be five, though investigations will reveal the actual number.
A few hours after the gruesome killing, a Nihang Sikh, Sarabjit Singh had claimed while speaking to media persons that he had "punished" the victim for "desecrating" a Sikh holy book.
While the police later said that they have arrested Sarabjit, Nihangs had claimed that he had surrendered.
Facing flak over the gruesome killing of a man at the Singhu border, farmer leaders on Saturday said they will upgrade security by installing CCTV cameras and increasing the number of volunteers at the protest sites even as they asserted that the incident will have no impact on the agitation against the Centre's three agri laws.
The Samyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella body of farmer unions is spearheading the protests, issued a statement on Friday distancing itself from the incident and said that it wanted to make it clear that "both the parties to the incident", the Nihang group and the victim, have no relation with the Morcha.
Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), which is leading the charge at Ghazipur on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, said more cameras would be installed and there shall be a change in the deployment of volunteers at the protest site in the wake of the Friday incident.
"So far volunteers affiliated to local groups of farmer unions were deployed at the protest site to monitor the situation and coordinate security-related issues. But it has been decided now that such volunteers shall be deployed only by SKM at protest sites," BKU's media in-charge Dharmendra Malik told a national news agency.