ISI terror module behind targeted killings in Punjab

CM says 6 cases of attacks on rightwing leaders solved, plot hatched to create communal rift in the state

CHANDIGARH: Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday said the police have busted an ISI-backed terror module that was involved in targetted attacks on right-wing leaders, including the sensational murder of Punjab RSS deputy chief Brigadier Jagdish Gagneja (retd) in Jalandhar last year.

The CM has been under fire over failure of his government to prevent such killings, the latest being that of Hindu Sangharsh Sena’s Amritsar district president Vipan Sharma on October 30. In a hurriedly-called press conference here, Captain said: “Four persons have been arrested. There was a major conspiracy to fan communal disturbance and destabilise the state, hatched by the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan and other countries.”

“The interrogation of the four conspirators showed 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 arrests endorsed our suspicion of a growing nexus between radicals and gangsters,” he said.

DGP Suresh Arora said all these killings were inter-connected and the assailants were leaving behind their footprints in every case. “Similar weapons were used in all eight cases —standard 9mm, .32 and .30 bore pistols,” the DGP said.

He identified three of the suspects as Jimmy Singh (a Jammu resident who recently returned to India from the 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 alias Guggni, a gangster from Meharban in Ludhiana who Arora said was supplying weapons to the killers.

The fourth accused, he said, was the main shooter in the various cases, and was caught this afternoon.

“The details about him can’t be disclosed at this juncture as his interrogation is still going on,” he added.

“Of the eight targeted killings, including that of a pastor in Ludhiana, seven have been solved. Only the murder case of Namdhari sect matriarch Chand Kaur remains unsolved,” said Arora. The chief minister said it was evident from the investigations that the killings were aimed at fanning communal disturbances to further ISI’s antiIndia game plan.