Gunman shoots Sikh leader outside India’s Golden Temple

• The police arrested the assailant from Golden Temple.
• The attack was prevented due to “vigilance”, police say.
• The reason for the attack was not immediately clear.

MUMBAI: A gunman shot dead a prominent Sikh politician outside the Golden Temple in northern India on Wednesday before police caught up and arrested him, fearing the popular spot that witnessed a bloody clash between Sikhs and troops four decades ago .

The politician, former deputy chief minister of Punjab state, Sukhbir Singh Badal, was unharmed.

The attacker, identified by police as Narain Singh, 68, appeared on television footage from the news agency ANI walking to the entrance of the temple in the city of Amritsar, the holiest shrine for the Sikhs, and sneaking a gun out of his pocket to shoot Badal.

He was stopped and pushed away by a plainclothes officer standing next to Badal, but not before firing a stray shot, which hit no one, police said.

“Due to the vigilance and deployment of our police, this attempted attack was foiled,” Amritsar Police Commissioner Gurpeet Singh Bhullar told reporters, adding that the gunman had been arrested.

The cause of the attack was not immediately clear.

Badal, a former ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, was sitting outside the Golden Temple performing a penance ritual imposed on him by the Akal Takht, the highest body of Sikhism.

Sikhism is one of the country’s major religions, and Sikhs make up nearly 2% of India’s population of 1.4 billion.

In 1984, then-prime minister Indira Gandhi sent the army to the Golden Temple to oust armed Sikh separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his supporters, angering Sikhs around the world.

A few months later, Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards at her home in New Delhi.