India jailbreak

Given that reports about jailbreak in the Indian Punjab city of Nabha are conflicting the whys and wherefores of the incident remains a mystery. As to how many armed men stormed the prison the reports differ. The concerned authorities say they were six or seven, but local people say they could be 20 or more. The attackers stabbed the guard at the gate of the high security prison and injured two others by firing but suffered no casualty. Why there was no return fire by the guards at this high security prison. That too smacks so much surreal. Also, who would believe that the attackers were in police uniform feigning to take some prisoners for the court hearing while the day of occurrence was Sunday when courts are closed. In fact the differences as to what actually took place in the Nabha prison the variations abound. But what is uncontested is that one of the escapees was chief of the Khalistan Liberation Force Harminder Singh, and that the jailbreak assault took place within a week of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Punjab. "Pakistan could be behind the sensational Nabha jailbreak ... Pakistan is desperate to revive terrorism," claimed Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, repeating what Modi says about the uprising in India-held Kashmir. The truth about the incident eludes also because of the "conspiracy between terrorists and gangsters to disturb peace in Punjab before elections," adds Badal, who must have detected early signs of revival of Khalistan Movement as reaction to the rising tide of Hinduism. Among the escapees from the Nabha prison is also Gurpeet Singh who is accused of carrying out an attack on the Shiv Sena Punjab Secretary in April last year.
The Harminder Singh-led Khalistan Liberation Force is one of the four militant groups in the Khalistan Movement. The movement is fighting for an independent homeland for the Sikhs, which draws sustenance also from the assurance Jawaharlal Nehru had given to Sikhs for "semi-autonomous" status in the Union - as he supported the Kashmiris' right of self-determination through plebiscite. The Khalistan movement acquired great momentum and popularity in the 1970s and 80s, among others under the leadership of Jarnail Singh Bindranwale. But it was brutally put down by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi. She was assassinated by her Sikh guards after she ordered storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. Of late, once again the Khalistan Movement seems to be coming alive, essentially as reaction to the Prime Minister Modi's attempt at obtaining the rule of Brahmanism in the guise of Hindutva, which offends the Sikhs as it is rejected by the Kashmiris. So, it is yet to be clearly figured out as to what is behind the easy escape of Harminder Singh from the Nabha prison. It could be a setup to blame Pakistan as was the case of the Pathankot incident. It could be a trap to kill the KLF chief, as the murder of the eight so-called Islamists who 'escaped' a prison in Madhya Pradesh only to be finished hours later in a shootout which many allege was staged by police. Or, it could be a genuine jailbreak by a leader of the Khalistan Movement, with connivance of jail staff who too may be sympathetic to the cause of their community which now feels increasingly threatened by the rise of Hindutva.