Suspected Khalistani terrorists shot dead Sant Pradhan Singh, the local head of the Dera Maidas Nirmali — a little known religious sect based in Village Baddon in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur District.
Armed with AK-47 rifles, the assassins struck before sunrise on Sunday just as the dera chief made preparations for his morning prayer rituals. Farmers, also going about their morning chores, told the police that four young men waiting outside the dera premises opened fire almost as soon as Sant Pradhan Singh threw open main gates.
“Santji fell to the ground but they kept firing and deflated the tyres of jeep parked outside while fleeing on another vehicle,” a villager said.
The police officials later recovered several expended Klashnikov shells from the scene of the crime. These have been sent for forensic examination.
Hoshiarpur’s senior superintendent of police Mr Rakesh Aggarwal told this newspaper “the killing appears completely unprovoked”. According to him, though rooted in Sikh religious rituals and the Guru Granth Sahib, the Dera Maidas Nirmali of Sant Pradhan Singh have never known to be involved in any controversy.
He said unlike many other religious outfits, this dera does not even have any pending land or other dispute with local villagers. Though nowhere as widespread or influential as the Dera Sacha Sauda or the Radha Soami sects, the Maidas Nirmali is restricted to a local following of committed adherents.
The sect is said to have its roots in Hardwar.
While the dera’s followers have been restrained in their reaction and quietly cremated their guru this evening, the assassination has senior Punjab police officials very worried because it has all the signatures of a terrorist crime. Some officials believe this could be part of a larger terrorist plot to target self-styled religious leaders who are viewed as an affront and a threat to mainstream Sikhism in the wake of the widespread sectarian clashes between Sikhs and followers of the Dera Sacha Sauda in May 2007.
Only last year suspected terrorists managed to kill the head of the Ravidas Sect in Vienna and before that, the chief of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, Rulda Singh was shot dead in his Patiala home.