CHANDIGARH, India -- Sikh extremists armed with submachine guns assassinated a Punjab leader of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's Congress Party and his bodyguard Monday at a gas station, police said.
At least four other people were killed in attacks by suspected extremists of the Sikh relibion in attacks throughout the northern state, police and news reports said.
Police said Joginder Pal Pandey, general secretary of the Congress Party in Punjab and a former state government minister, was on the hit lists of Sikh radical groups for addressing rallies protesting the extremists' bloody campaign to create the independent Sikh nation of Khalistan in Punjab.
More than 600 people, mostly Hindus, died in extremist violence in Punjab last year in what officials said was a campaign to scare the minority community into fleeing the predominantly Sikh state.
Police said Pandey, 60, was shot as he sat in the back seat of his car at a gas station in Ludhiana, 50 miles northwest of the state capital of Chandigarh and the state's largest city, at about 11:30 a.m.
They said two Sikhs jumped from another car and riddled Pandey's vehicle with bullets, killing his bodyguard outright and fatally wounding Pandey. He was declared dead on arrival at hospital. His driver escaped unhurt.
Municipal officials imposed a curfew on parts of Ludhiana to prevent any violent protests by Hindus. Punjab authorities ordered government and educational institutions throughout the state closed for the rest of the day out of respect for Pandey.
The Ludhiana unit of the Shiv Sena, a militant Hindu organization, issued a call for a general strike in the city Tuesday to protest the killing.
In another incident today, police said two Sikh extremists shot and killed a Hindu doctor on a public bus near Kapurthala, about 100 miles northwest of Chandigarh. They said the gunmen had shadowed the man, identified as Rajesh Kumar, for a few days.
Sikh gunmen also killed a Hindu cloth merchant who was walking to work and two teachers in separate incidents in Gurdaspur district in the north of the state, police and the Press Trust of India said. They gave no further details.
