Bhindranwale Quotes

The decision to release Bhindranwale was taken by the government.

In fact it was the burning of his sermons, not his arrest, which turned Bhindranwale against his political godfather, Zail Singh, and against Mrs Gandhi.

paramilitary police officers believed the Punjab police were on Bhindranwale's

Jagjit Singh Bawa, a Sikh property dealer, said that Bhindranwale used to extort money by threats from his own community too. Bawa once received a letter demanding 20,000 rupees. He

Longowal and the Akali Dal Trinity must also bear their share of the blame for the failure to arrest Bhindranwale.

There is therefore considerable evidence to suggest that Bhindranwale's release was ordered by the Home Minister. He certainly still enjoyed Zail Singh's patronage.

By the time of Santokh Singh's death Bhindranwale's men were known to have killed two policemen and ten civilians, attempted to murder a senior civil servant and planted a bomb in the office of a deputy inspector-general of police. There had been several other bomb explosions and attempts to derail trains, one successful. An airliner had been hijacked

The eighty-year-old scholar had openly criticised Bhindranwale for storing arms and ammunition in the Akal Takht, and had said that Bhindranwale's presence in the shrine was sacrilege. The hukmnama against Bhindranwale was never issued.

The Akali Dai's decision to adopt Bhindranwale was rank political opportunism.

Towards the end of Bhindranwale's time reports based on briefings from Indian intelligence sources started appearing in the press about a double agent called the 'Falcon' who used to cross the border into Pakistan. He was said to be liaising with a Pakistani general and then reporting back to the Indian intelligence agency RAW (Research and Analysis Wing).

In the two months of April and May 1984, at least eighty persons were killed and 107 injured in Bhindranwale-led extremist activities