NIA raids 13 locations in Punjab, Haryana and 3 other states
The National Investigation Agency on Tuesday raided multiple locations in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan in connection with its probe against “organised terror gangs” involved in criminal activities such as targeted killing, extortion, kidnapping, smuggling of arms, narco-terrorism, and turf wars in north India, officials familiar with the development said.
The raids at around 13 locations in six districts of the five states were carried out to unearth criminal activities, linkages and money trail of these gangsters, particularly jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, the officials added.
A statement by NIA said that it conducted raids at total of 13 locations in Fazilka, Taran Tarn, Ludhiana, Sangrur, Mohali districts in Punjab; Yamunanagar (Haryana) Sikar (Rajasthan) and Delhi NCR to “dismantle and disrupt the emerging nexus between terrorists, gangsters and drug smugglers/traffickers based in India and abroad”.
The criminals raided include gangsters Kaushal Chaudhary, who is active in Gurugram-rajasthan, Vishal Maan of Prahladpurdelhi, Binny Gurjar of Sangrur, Ravi Rajgarh of Ludhiana and their associates.
In Yamunanagar, the NIA, assisted by local police, detained two accomplices of gangster Kala Rana, a member of Lawrence Bishnoi gang, after they raided their residences at two locations at Vishnu Nagar of Farakpur area and Subhash Nagar of Chhoti Line area. Those arrested have been identified as Abhishek Dhiman alias Panjeta and Simraneet Singh alias Bawa. They are being questioned by the central investigating agency, deputy superintendent of police (DSP), Yamunanagar-1, Rajiv Kumar said.
“Their premises were raided by the team to probe in connection with their own case and both were detained. The men were earlier arrested by our police for attempting to attack cops in September and they were recently released on bail,” Kumar told reporters.
The DSP, however, denied reports that Abhishek had fled before the team could arrive at his house, saying, “as per our inputs, both have been detained by the NIA.” The NIA team conducted a raid at the house of gangster Rajvir Singh, alias Ravi Rajgarh, who is also an accused in the murder case of singer-turned-politician Sidhu Moose Wala, at Rajgarh village in Doraha in Ludhiana district. Though Rajgarh was not present at his home, the NIA team questioned his family members for four hours.
It was the second raid at the house of the gangster in the past two-and-a-half months. Rajgarh is facing a trial in 12 cases, including murder, attempt to murder and assault at various police stations.
A team of the federal agency raided the Sangrur jail and recovered a mobile phone from a ‘C’ category gangster, identified as Deepak Kumar, alias Binny Gujjar, a resident of Hoshiarpur. He is lodged in the jail in a murder case. Sources said the NIA teams arrived here in the morning and searched Gujjar’s cell for over four hours and recovered a keypad mobile phone. Sangrur SSP Surindra Lamba said, “the NIA team searched the cell of gangster Gujjar. Apart from that, we do not have any information.” the NIA also conducted a raid at the house of Advocate Hira Singh Sandhu and Gurdayal Singh Sandhu in Marhana village falling under the Patti sub-division of Tarn Taran.
Sources said Gurdayal was interrogated by the NIA officials and his cellphone was also confiscated. “The recent crimes and extortion calls by criminal syndicates... had created a scare among people. These gangs were using cyber-space to publicise these crimes...” NIA said.