Two persons were killed and two others, including a granthi of a gurdwara, were injured in Punjab during the past 24 hours while the police and paramilitary forces arrested five suspected extremists. Avtar Singh was gunned down by two people when he was standing outside a house in Dangoan village in Ludhiana district, while another person identified as Sher Singh was shot at and injured seriously.
There are 4,000 Sikh men in Punjab’s jails today and they are all innocent, said Parkash Singh Badal, the former chief minister. Speaking at the Kapur Singh memorial function held in Chandigarh by the All-India Panthic Forum, Badal said the claim of the Barnala government that only 300-400 Sikhs remained in the state’s jails was false. In fact, he said, the number of detainees was one-and-a-half times the number arrested during Operation Bluestar in 1984.
Support for Sonia Gandhi
The Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee-I (DPCC-I) demanded that Sonia Gandhi be appointed the Congress-I chief. An executive committee meeting of DPCC-I’s labour cell passed a resolution urging an All-India Congress-I Committee special session to elect her Indian National Congress president.
Militias clash in Beirut
Lebanese Forces militiamen crushed a thrust by the supporters of a rival Christian leader to regain control of East Beirut. Police said the fighting left 62 people dead and 198 wounded. “The last pocket of resistance was mopped up at daybreak, when 12 infiltrators from Elie Hobeika supporters surrendered,” said a communiqué of the Lebanese Forces, the nation’s largest Christian militia.