Chandigarh, November 8: The Punjab Police has solved most of the cases of targeted killings, including the sensational Gagneja case, with the arrest of four persons, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh announced on Tuesday, disclosing a major conspiracy to fan communal disturbances and destabilize the state, hatched by the ISI in Pakistan and other countries.
Though the state government had handed over the case of the killing of RSS state vice president Brigadier Jagdish Gagneja to the CBI, the state police had cracked this case too with the busting of the latest terror module – the 8th such module to be smashed since his government took charge, said Captain Amarinder.
Last month’s murder case of another RSS leader Ravinder Gosain has also been solved with these arrests, which have been linked to most of the cases of targeted killings that have taken place in Ludhiana, Khanna and Jalandhar since January 2016, the Chief Minister told a press conference, citing police investigations and interrogation of the suspects.
The conspirators who have been arrested include a gangster, Dharmendra alias Guggni, lodged in Nabha jail, further endorsing the suspicions of a growing nexus between radicals and gangsters, the Chief Minister further revealed.
Giving details, Captain Amarinder said the interrogation of the four conspirators showed that they had met and been trained in various places abroad and had been using encrypted mobile software/ apps for communication with handlers based in Pakistan and some western countries.
The ISI was always looking out to disturb the country’s peace and to radicalize the youth, said the Chief Minister in response to a question, asserting that the state government would not allow the peace and harmony of Punjab to be disrupted.
The Chief Minister said it was evident from the investigations that the targeted killings were aimed at fanning communal disturbances to further ISI’s anti-India game-plan since there were strong indications of the active involvement of Pakistani intelligence operatives based in Pak and foreign soil.
Three of the suspects have been identified as Jimmy Singh (a Jammu resident who recently returned to India from UK after spending many years there, and was picked up a week ago from Delhi’s IGI airport), Jagtar Singh Johal alias Jaggi (a UK national who got married just last month and was apprehended in Jalandhar), Dharmender @ Guggni (a gangster from Meharban in Ludhiana who was supplying weapons to the killers).
The fourth culprit, who was the main shooter in the various cases, was caught this afternoon and details about him could not be disclosed at this juncture as his interrogation was still continuing, said the Chief Minister, adding that the police had both forensic and ballistic evidence against him.
The police were on top of the cases, the Chief Minister, and added that he had directed the DGP to work out a system of awards and rewards for the police team that had busted this module and for future too.
While he could not completely rule out such incidents in the future in view of Punjab being a border state, with international conspirators working against it, the DGP assured the people of the state that they were in safe hands with the Punjab police.
The DGP said the assailants were leaving behind their footprints with every case. Similar weapons were used in Durga Das and Brigadier Jagdish Gagneja (Jalandhar) cases, as were done in Amit Sharma case in Ludhiana. Investigations also showed that the same kind of weapons were used in the February 2017 Khanna killings of DSS follower Satpal Kumar and his son, July 2017 Ludhiana killing of Christian Pastor Sultan Masih and last month’s Ludhiana murder of RSS leader Ravinder Gosain.
In fact, the same kind of weapons were also used in the Ludhiana RSS Shakha case of January 2016 and Amit Arora murder case of February 2016, said the DGP, adding that the weapons used by the criminals in all the eight cases were standard 9mm, .32 and .30 bore pistols.
DGP Suresh Arora attributed the success in busting the terrorist module to the team effort of the intelligence and counter-intelligence wings as well as the district police of Batala and Moga. The team consisted of IG Intelligence Amit Prasad, DIG Counter-Intelligence Ranbir Khatra, SSP Moga Ranjit Singh, SSP Batala Opinderjit Ghuman, SP Rajinder Singh, SP Wazir Singh, DSPs Sulakhan Singh and Sarabjit Singh, Inspector CIA Moga Kikar Singh and ASI Haripal.
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