Mumbai: A court has granted permission to National Investigation Agency (NIA) to interrogate Harpal Singh Naik arrested from Pune for allegedly attempting to conspire to revive Sikh militancy. He was found in possession with a weapon. The NIA would question him in jail between February 26 and March 1.

While seeking permission to interrogate 42-year-old Naik, the NIA in its application alleged that the accused, along with other arrested and wanted accused, were planning for jail breaks for releasing members of Babbar Khalsa Interna-tional (BKI) in order to revive the movement and they wanted to conduct probe in this regard too.

The anti-terrorism squad (ATS) had arrested Naik from Pune in Dec-ember 2018, for allegedly having links with Khali-stan Separatist movement. Last month, the NIA took over the probe, begun further investigation and hence the case has been remanded to NIA court in Mumbai.

Apart from Naik, the ATS had also arrested Mohiuddin Siddiqui and Surjeet Nijjar. While the court granted permission to NIA to interrogate Naik in jail, the agency’s req-uest seeking custodial interrogation of Siddiqui has been deferred for hea-ring till Wednesday so that Siddiqui could eng-age a lawyer for himself.

The ATS has arrested Siddiqui for allegedly supplying arms to Naik. According to the ATS, they had recovered firearm and ammunition from Naik’s possession at the time of his arrest.

According to the police, Naik believed in the idea of a separate Khalistan country.