2015 Jalandhar tiffin bombing case: On the run, accused held from Sirsa

LUDHIANA : Police arrested a proclaimed offender, Ratan Dhanjal alias Chuha, of Jivan Nagar village in Sirsa district of Haryana after a raid at his village on Tuesday.

Dhanjal is also wanted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Jalandhar tiffin car bomb blast that took place in the district’s Dugri village in December 2015. The Ludhiana police have, however, arrested him in connection with a local murder case and a court remanded him to one-day police custody on Tuesday.

ACP (crime) Surinder Mohan said Dhanjal is also accused of supplying explosives in the form of RDX to those who had planned and executed the tiffin bombing that is linked to a conspiracy to target Namdhari sect head, Uday Singh.

“We are questioning the accused in a murder case. The CBI could take him for questioning on a production warrant,” the ACP added.

In the tiffin blast, a man Ajay Kumar had died, while Jagmohan Singh had suffered injuries. Later, investigation of this tiffin bombing was transferred to the CBI and the agency had registered a case under Sections 302 (murder), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and 3, 4 and 5 of Explosive Substances Act.

In September this year, the agency had arrested Palwinder Singh alias Dimple of Delhi; Harbhej Singh of Jivan Nagar village of Sirsa, and Hardeep Singh of Bolath.

The court had declared Dhanjal as a proclaimed offender on November 28, 2017, after he could not be arrested.

THREE CASES THAT ARE LINKED TO EACH OTHER

In its investigations, the CBI has found a link between the December 2015 tiffin bombing, the April 2016 murder of Mata Chand Kaur, wife of former Namdhari head Satguru Jagjit Singh, and the murder of Namdhari leader Avtar Singh Tari, who had been gunned down by unidentified assailants on April 12, 2011, near Kohara.

Suspecting that all the three cases were linked, the previous SAD-BJP government had handed over the three cases to the agency in 2016.

Palvinder, a resident of Delhi, was earlier arrested from Bangkok, and is the main accused in the tiffin blast case.

He was deported to India on October 11, 2018.

It was on September 24 this year that the investigating agency had moved a formal application in CBI court for his production warrants. The CBI had told the court that the accused was not cooperating in the investigations in the Chand Kaur murder case and needed to be interrogated in custody.

We are questioning the accused in a murder case. The CBI could take him for questioning on a production warrant. SURINDER MOHAN, ACP (crime), Ludhiana