Attari (Punjab), Feb 22 (IANS) After raising to the national level in New Delhi the issue of the beheading of a Sikh man by Taliban elements, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday took the protest right up to the border with Pakistan.
Senior Punjab BJP leaders, accompanied with nearly 100 party workers, strongly condemned the incident near Pakistan’s Peshawar city, by staging a protest rally at the Attari-Wagah joint border checkpost, 25 km from Amritsar.

The protesters included state Health Minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla, state BJP president Ashwani Sharma and cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is also the member of parliament (MP) from Amritsar Lok Sabha constituency.

They raised anti-Taliban slogans and also burnt the effigy of Taliban to mark the protest.

The protesters were stopped at some distance by the Border Security Force (BSF), which mans the international border here.

“The Taliban has badly hurt the self-respect of not only Sikhs but of all Indians. In history also, Sikhs had willingly sacrificed their lives but that was done for the sake of the nation and self-respect. This barbaric act is totally intolerable,” Sidhu said.

“They should understand that Sikhs are equally capable to defend themselves even now,” he added.