Chandigarh: Jailed radical preacher and Lok Sabha MP Amritpal Singh has moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking directions for quashing of entire proceedings against him under the stringent National Security Act, including detention.
He stated that his detention was “illegal” and, therefore, it was liable to be set aside.
Amritpal, who heads the ‘Waris Punjab De’ outfit and has styled himself after Khalistani terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, has been lodged in Dibrugarh Central Jail since his arrest in April 2023.
“It served no purpose whatsoever except to punish the petitioner for being vocal against the state and the Central governments on major political issues, which is a democratic right of every citizen of this country. The grounds of detention are primarily based on social media posts uploaded by different persons across the world, which have hardly any impact in the state of Punjab and possibly the security of the state of India cannot be so fragile as to be impacted by social media posts,” Amritpal said in his petition.
He further submitted to the court that the petitioner’s “right to life and liberty has been completely taken away in an unusual and cruel manner by not only invoking the preventive detention Act for more than one year, but also detaining him away from his home state, home, friends, making it unduly harsh and vindictive because the distance between his home and state of detention is almost 2,600 km.”
Despite being behind bars, Amritpal won from Punjab’s Khadoor Sahib constituency in the Lok Sabha polls. He was granted four-day parole earlier this month to travel to Delhi and take oath as a Member of Parliament.
was arrested in Moga’s Rode village after he and his supporters barged into the Ajnala police station breaking barricades on February 23 last year.
Amritpal was jailed along with nine of his associates under the NSA.
