In a major terrorist attack, three people were killed and 20 injured when two masked men threw a grenade at a congregation in Amritsar district yesterday, police said.
The attack took place at the Nirankari Satsang Bhawan of the Nirankari sect in Adliwal village, about 15km from Amritsar.
The campus is 3km from the Guru Ram Das Jee Amritsar International Airport.
The injured were rushed to hospitals in Amritsar. Two of them were in a serious condition, the police said.
All the victims were followers of the Nirankari sect from nearby villages who had gathered for the weekly religious meeting.
Punjab Director General of Police Suresh Arora, who rushed to the scene along with senior police officers, admitted it was a “terror act”.
“We are taking it as a terror act. This incident is against a group and not an individual. That’s why we are taking it as a terror act. We did not have any specific input of a strike against any particular group,” he said in Adliwal.
Arora said further investigations will reveal details about who was behind the attack.
Witnesses told the police that two men, their faces covered, came on a motorcycle and forcibly entered the campus by pointing a pistol at a woman volunteer at the gate.
“Everything happened within a couple of minutes. They got in, threw the grenade and fled,” a witness told the police.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh asked the police to immediately enhance security at all sensitive places, terming it as “the first such indiscriminate attack on innocent people in the recent past”.
“Preliminary investigations had so far revealed that two men, one of them with a flowing beard, with covered faces, allegedly forced their way into the hall by brandishing a pistol.
They detained the sewadar, lobbed the grenade into the prayer room, and escaped on a motorcycle,” he said.
A crater was formed by the impact of the explosion and was being examined by a forensic team.
The safety valve of the grenade has also been found, the chief minister said.
“The possibility of involvement of ISI-based Khalistani/Kashmiri terror groups cannot be ruled out. Police teams are investigating various angles,” Singh said in a statement.
The attack happened amid a high alert issued on November 14 by the Punjab police about the movement of six to seven terrorists in the state.
Inspector General of Police S P S Parmar said that all angles, about who could be behind the attack, were being investigated.
“The people had gathered for prayers. There were around 200 people. Preliminary reports suggest that the two persons threw one grenade. No firing took place,” he said.
The Nirankari sect, with headquarters in Delhi, has millions of followers across the country and abroad.
In recent months, Khalistani and Kashmiri activists have been trying to foment trouble in Punjab, which shares a 553km-long barbed wire fenced international border with Pakistan.
The Punjab and Kashmir police had recently busted two modules of Kashmiri students who were studying in institutions in Punjab and having links to terrorist outfits in troubled Kashmir.
The Maqsudan police station was targeted by Kashmiri terrorists on September 14 this year with hand grenades though no one was injured.
Posters of Kashmiri terrorist Zakir Mussa had mysteriously appeared in Gurdaspur district on Friday saying that he had been seen in Punjab.
The chief minister said he would ensure that the culprits were apprehended.
“Though the state had been hit by a series of cases of targeted attacks since 2015/16, this was the first attempt, in a long time, to disturb the peace in the state through indiscriminate killings,” Singh said.
Punjab Director General of Police Suresh Arora speaks to reporters after the grenade attack in Amritsar yesterday.
