Ajnala police station incident

Who: Amritpal Singh, head of Waris Punjab De (the organisation Deep Sidhu founded before dying in a road accident in February 2022), his aide Lovepreet Singh "Toofan", their supporters, and Punjab Police under the AAP government.

What: Days earlier, police had booked Amritpal and his supporters on a complaint that a man from Chamkaur Sahib had been kidnapped and beaten, and Toofan was arrested. Amritpal called the case false. On 23 February 2023 his supporters, armed with swords, guns, lathis and sticks, set out for Ajnala, stopping at the Dhilwan toll plaza on the way and halting traffic on the Amritsar-Delhi highway. ThePrint says police had put up barricades and deployed over 400 personnel. The Guru Granth Sahib was carried with the crowd. The supporters broke through the barricades and entered the police complex. The Tribune says several police were injured; Wikipedia says six.

Police did not use force. Officers said they held back out of respect for the Guru Granth Sahib. After talks with senior officers, the SSP said Toofan would be released the next day on the strength of evidence Amritpal's side had supplied, and that a special investigation team would look into the case against Amritpal and his men. A court in Ajnala ordered the release. The Wire quotes observers who called the use of the Guru Granth Sahib calculated, and a journalist who said the government had mishandled the matter.

Where: Ajnala police station, Amritsar district, Punjab.

Why it mattered: Supporters entered a police station, and the police released the man they had come for. On 18 March police began a crackdown: 112 people were arrested, mobile internet was suspended across Punjab, and Amritpal went into hiding (Al Jazeera). After about five weeks he was arrested on 23 April 2023 at Rode village in Moga and sent to Dibrugarh jail in Assam under the National Security Act (Wikipedia). While held there he won the Khadoor Sahib seat in June 2024 as an independent, by 1,97,120 votes (The Tribune).