Fake letter in Amritpal's name claims a Sikh-BJP alliance

Who: Amritpal Singh, the Khadoor Sahib MP and Waris Punjab De chief held under the National Security Act at Dibrugarh; his uncle Sukhchain Singh, a retired Punjab Police inspector, who spoke for the family; and whoever wrote and spread the letter, whom no report names.

What: In February 2025 a letter in Amritpal's name went viral online. According to The Tribune, it said he had discussed matters with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah during his oath-taking in Delhi, and that he had proposed a purely Sikh political party joining forces with the BJP for the welfare of Punjabis. It also had him saying that the Khalistan question should be left aside for now so that more rights could be won for Punjab, and that an agreement with the BJP would be acceptable if it served Punjab.

On 14 February Sukhchain Singh said the letter was fake, that the signatures were not Amritpal's, and that the family was complaining to the Cyber Police. News Arena reported the same day that the family had asked for legal action against those spreading it and that police were working to trace where it came from.

The oath the letter refers to was taken on 5 July 2024, when Amritpal was flown from Dibrugarh jail to Delhi on four-day custody parole and sworn in at the Speaker's chamber under heavy security. A month before the letter appeared, on 14 January 2025, his supporters and family launched Akali Dal (Waris Punjab De) at Maghi in Muktsar and named him its head, mukh sewadar.

Where: Online, with the family's complaint going to the Cyber Police; Amritpal himself was in Dibrugarh jail, Assam.

Why it mattered: Amritpal could not answer the letter himself, so the denial had to come through his uncle. The letter has him setting Khalistan aside and allying with the BJP, which runs against the stand he took in public in July 2024, when he said that dreaming of Khalsa Raj is no crime and that he would not step aside from that path. It circulated while he was still held under the NSA, a preventive detention law; two months later the Punjab government moved to extend that detention by another year.