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Indian fires at Vienna police during raids

VIENNA/LONDON: The Austrian police on Monday arrested an Indian after he allegedly fired at them during a raid in connection with last month’s killing of a Sikh preacher at a gurdwara here.

“The arrested Indian fired at Wega and Cobra special forces officers, who searched nine flats and houses today,” Vienna police spokesman Michael Takacs said.

The officers were investigating the shoot-out at the Ravi Dass Gurdwara in Vienna-Rudolfsheim on May 24, in which Sant Rama Anand, 57, leader of Dera Sachkhand Ballan, was killed.

“The man was immediately overpowered and taken into custody,” Mr. Takacs was quoted as saying by The Austrian Times.

The suspect, who was released from preventive detention on June 5, has also been taken into custody again.

The raids across the capital began in the afternoon, as the authorities tried to collect more evidence.

Mr. Takacs said the police did not know how the man was connected with the case or why he fired at the commandos. The police seized weapons and knives and confiscated the car of one of the suspects. More evidence had been found in the vehicle.

The police said they had found more evidence linking Hardeep Singh, 33, an asylum-seeker facing deportation, to the attack.

Mr. Takacs dismissed claims that the attack was a hired killing, but said: “We do not exclude anything.”

Six suspects were detained immediately after the attack. One of them, a suspected ringleader, is still in coma in a Viennese hospital after suffering a head-shot. The guru’s body was sent to India two weeks ago and cremated in Punjab. The other injured guru, Sant Niranjan Dass, left Austria on the same plane. — PTI

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