Punjab wants MP Amritpal Singh to remain in Assam jail

The Punjab Government on Thursday filed a fresh plea before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, seeking confinement of Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh at Dibrugarh jail in Assam as his detention under the National Security Act comes to end on April 22. 

Amritpal Singh has been kept in the prison in Assam in connection with the 2023 Ajnala Police Station attack case. In a separate order, the High Court on Thursday dismissed Amritpal’s plea, challenging the third detention order under the NSA issued by the Punjab Government in April last year.

In the latest plea, a counsel representing the Punjab Government informed a bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu that the state intended to arrest Amritpal and continue his custody in Dibrugarh jail, citing intelligence inputs and security concerns.

Amritpal’s counsel, Iman Singh Khara, said the state Government filed a plea that the lawmaker should continue to be lodged in the Assam jail. Khara said the High Court will hear the Punjab Government’s plea on Friday.

Amritpal has been under detention under the National Security Act since April 2023.

His detention is going to come to an end on April 22 and the state Government is unlikely to extend it.

According to the plea, Amritpal is likely to be arrested on April 23. The Amritsar Rural Senior Superintendent of Police, who filed the plea on behalf of the state Government, sought the High Court’s intervention to issue directions to confine Amritpal in Assam jail consequent to his arrest, with a permission to permit the police to investigate him at a designated place in Dibrugarh, read the plea.

The petitioner also sought the court to allow the state to conduct the entire judicial proceedings from the beginning, including the production of the accused after arrest, remand, presentation of chargesheet, through video conferencing.

“The grounds mentioned in the writ petition, which reveal the anti-national, nefarious activities of Amritpal Singh and his supporters, which may become a reason for threat to the interest of the security of the state, law and order situation, and cause prejudice to the public order of the state,” the plea read.

The petitioner also mentioned the consent of the Assam Government for lodging Amritpal Singh at the Central Jail, Dibrugarh, as per the provisions of the Transfer of Prisoners Act, 1952, read with the Transfer of the Prisoners Act, 2025.

In another case, the High Court dismissed Amritpal’s plea, challenging the state Government’s detention order under the NSA.

“... It is clear as daylight that the impugned order of preventive detention passed against the petitioner is immuned from the powers of judicial review,” the order of the division bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sanjiv Berry read.

In his plea, Amritpal had sought quashing of the third successive detention order passed against him on April 23, 2025, for one year.

According to the order, the court did not find any illegality in the detention order issued by the Amritsar district magistrate on April 24, 2025.

The order mentioned several grounds of detention, including “conspiring with anti-national elements”, “association with dreaded gangsters and terrorists”, “intent to physically eliminate persons who have the potentiality to publicly expose petitioner’s and tarnish his image” and “campaigning the cause of Khalistan separatist.”

Amritpal, the chief of the ‘Waris Punjab De’ group, and who styled himself after slain Khalistani militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, was arrested in Moga’s Rode village on April 23, 2023, following a month-long manhunt.

The Punjab Police launched the crackdown on the group after the February 23, 2023, Ajnala incident. 

Amritpal and his supporters, some of them brandishing swords and guns, allegedly broke through barricades and barged into the police station on the outskirts of Amritsar city, and clashed with police for the release of his aides.

Amritpal fought the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as an Independent and won from Khadoor Sahib.

His detention was extended under the NSA in April 2025, even as his nine associates, who were also detained in the Assam jail, were brought back to Punjab. These nine associates were arrested in connection with the same incident.

Last month, the High Court dismissed the Khadoor Sahib MP’s plea, seeking the quashing of the Punjab Government’s decision of rejecting his application for temporary release to attend the Budget Session of Parliament.

The court then held that there was “no constitutional or legal infirmity” in the impugned order while observing that “national interests are paramount when compared with personal interests.”