A state police official announced on Sunday that Indian police had detained Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh after hunting for him for more than a month, in a move against the rebirth of an independent homeland in the neighboring state of Punjab.

The emergence of Singh, a preacher in the northern province of Punjab, where Sikhs are the majority, has reignited talk of an independent Sikh homeland and fueled worries of a return to the violence that killed tens of thousands of people during a Sikh insurgency in the 1980s and early 1990s.

“Amritpal Singh has been arrested from the Rode village in Moga district, Punjab on the basis of specific intelligence,” Sukhchain Singh Gill, a top official of the Punjab police told reporters.

The arrest of Amritpal Singh, 30 — who leads a group called Waris Punjab De (the heirs of Punjab)– comes after the self-styled preacher and hundreds of his supporters stormed a police station with swords and firearms, demanding the release of one of his aides.

Police have accused Singh and his supporters of attempted murder, obstruction of law enforcement, and creating disharmony, and said he had been on the run since mid-March.

He was arrested in the village gurudwara, a Sikh temple, under the National Security Act, which allows for those deemed a threat to national security to be detained without charge for up to a year, the police official said.

Gill said he would be moved to Dibrugarh, in the state of Assam, where some of his associates are already in jail.