Bhai Daljit Singh Bittu

Bhai Daljit Singh Bittu is a Panthic political leader and a former head of the Sikh Students Federation. The Tribune described him in 2005 as a "Khalistani proponent" and president of the Shiromani Khalsa Dal, and in 2012 as chief of the SAD (Panch Pardhani). He spent about ten years in detention before 2005, and he was arrested again in 2009.

Key moments

• 6 October 2005: on the orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court he was freed on parole from the high-security Nabha jail after ten years in detention. The Damdami Taksal chief, Baba Harnam Singh Dhumma, was present (The Tribune).
• November 2005: the Supreme Court acquitted him in the murder case over the shooting of a son of the then DSP Raj Kishen Bedi in Ludhiana on 10 June 1986. His counsel said the Court accepted that his confession was inadmissible under the old TADA law and that the witnesses were unreliable. The Tribune reported that he had faced 21 criminal cases and had been acquitted in all of them except a Rs 5.70 crore Punjab National Bank robbery case, in which he had already been granted bail. His parents told the paper that the police had framed their son.
• 28 August 2009: he was arrested in Ludhiana under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act with four others. Cases were also registered against him in Mansa, Ropar and Sardulgarh. He was freed in early 2012, almost two and a half years after his arrest, and had been acquitted in the Ropar case (The Tribune).
• 20 May 2016: the Panch Pardhani and Dal Khalsa announced a merger under the name Dal Khalsa. Spokesman Kanwar Pal Singh said Bhai Daljit Singh, the founder of the Panch Pardhani, and Gajinder Singh, the founder of Dal Khalsa, would remain the merged party's guiding force (The Tribune).

The Tribune noted in 2005 that political observers expected his release to unsettle the Akali leadership, and reported that during a parole a fortnight earlier he had called the Assembly's debate on violence in Punjab a farce, saying the Congress and the SAD were two sides of the same coin. These are his views as reported.

What he is remembered for. His decade in detention and the acquittals that followed, and the Panch Pardhani, the party he led until it merged into Dal Khalsa in 2016.