1 week Ago
The local court here on Wednesday sent the two persons arrested in connection with the grenade blast at the residence of BJP leader Manoranjan Kalia to a six-day police remand, police said. Police produced Ravinder Kumar of Garha and Satish Kumar alias Kaka of Bhargo camp, both cousins, in court amid heavy security. The e-rickshaw owned by Satish, used in the crime, has also been seized.
Police later said it was a conspiracy hatched by Pakistan spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and members of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, including Zeeshan Akhtar, who is also wanted in the murder of NCP leader and former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique, and Pakistani gangster Shahzad Bhatti to create communal tension in Punjab. According to police officials privy to the probe, two more suspects have been detained in New Delhi. However, there is no official word in this regard.
When asked, Jalandhar commissioner of police Dhanpreet Kaur Randhawa refused to either confirm or deny the development and said the investigation is still on and the operational details of the probe could not be shared at this stage as it might hamper further investigation. “The accused arrested on Tuesday have been taken into police remand for six days. They will be grilled further for their contacts with the key conspirators,” Randhawa said.
Police have not ruled out the possible links of the accused with Pakistan-based Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) mastermind Harwinder Singh alias Rinda and gangster Happy Passia. The involvement of the assailant(s) not belonging to Punjab has put the state police in a tizzy. “The pattern that came to the fore during grenade attacks at police installations and temple in Amritsar suggested was that the conspirators, operating from foreign soil, brainwashed untrained youths from Punjab through their local accomplices and made them throw hand grenades at certain locations for money.
However, it appears that now the handlers are hiring professionals from outside the state to do the job,” a senior official said, pleading anonymity. Punjab has witnessed at least 16 grenade attacks in the past seven months. In most cases, police installations have been targeted.
This was the first attack on a politician’s residence in Punjab. In March, a grenade was hurled at YouTuber Rozer Sandhu in Jalandhar’s Raipur Rasoolpur village, which didn’t detonate. “In the videos released by Shahzad Bhatti during the attack at Rozer Sandhu’s house, it was found that the persons hired to lob the hand grenade failed to remove the pin before throwing it at his residence.
A person on the video call could be heard guiding the assailant about removing the pin from the grenade,” a police official said. Majithia demands NIA probe; MP Randhawa writes to Shah Former Punjab minister Bikram Majithia met Kalia at his residence on Wednesday and demanded a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into grenade attacks in Punjab. “The NIA or any other central agency should initiate an investigation into the grenade attack at not only Kalia’s residence but all the 16 such attacks that have happened in Punjab in recent months.
It is a serious law and order situation,” Majithia said. Meanwhile, former deputy CM and Gurdaspur MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa has written a letter to Union home minister Amit Shah over plummeting law and order in Punjab. “The attacks.
.. have sent shock waves in the state.
There is a total failure of intelligence, police and political will to counter the emerging threat,” Randhawa said. Kalia on Wednesday said that he has been told by the investigators that the federal investigation agencies are holding a coordinated probe with the Jalandhar commissionerate in the case. “The central investigation officials also met the senior police officials on Wednesday,” he said.
Box: Mystery surrounds possible ‘third’ accused involved in attack A surveillance cam footage surfaced on Wednesday indicating a possible ‘third’ suspect involved in the attack on the BJP leader’s home. In the footage, the suspect is seen changing clothes before entering the Jalandhar railway station and boarding a Delhi-bound train. Police officials, privy to the probe, said that this third person, whose identity is yet to be ascertained, is believed to be the one who actually lobbed the grenade.
“During the initial interrogation of the arrested accused, it came to the fore that they were hired by Zeeshan through his Jalandhar-based friend. They were assigned to pick up the main accused (believed to be the third person in the CCTV footage) from a certain location and to drop him back at the railway station after the grenade attack,” said an official, who didn’t want to be named. Police have also procured the CCTV footage of the area from where the e-rickshaw driver picked up this ‘unidentified suspect’.
HT couldn’t independently confirm the veracity of the footage. One of the senior police officials said the teams of Jalandhar police and counter-intelligence unit are already stationed at the national capital for further investigation into the case. “We have been running a coordinated investigation with our counterparts from New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to arrest other active members of this particular module.
In addition, the central investigation agencies were also providing key inputs related to it,” said a senior police official, privy to the probe..
