2 weapons buried by Mintoo in Haryana field recovered
NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Wednesday recovered two weapons — a revolver and a pistol — that Sikh militant leader Harminder Singh Mintoo had buried in a sugarcane field at Kaithal in Haryana.
The police had taken Mintoo to the spot to recreate the sequence of events that unfolded after he and gangster Kashmeer Singh escaped from the Nabha jail on Sunday.
The police said they also recovered the hair of the duo who dumped it at the spot after trimming their beard and mustache.
Senior police officers said that these recoveries will be used as evidence against Mintoo in the court of law.
Mintoo, a senior police officer said, was given three weapons — two pistols and a revolver — and `19,000 in cash by Mani, brother of Gurpreet Singh Shekhon, who was the mastermind of the jail break. While Mintoo buried two weapons, he kept the third weapon and six cartridges with him while leaving the sugarcane field with Kashmeer.
When investigators inquired why he buried the weapons, he said carrying three weapons during his journey in public transport would have been risky. He claimed the weapons were safe there as the sugarcane field belonged to Shekhon’s cousin, said police.
Mintoo claimed that at the jail he was frequented by some associates of former Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) chief Bakshish Singh Nizamniwala alias Baba who was arrested by the Punjab Police in 2010. Bakshish was the mastermind of the attack on the Sirsa-based chief of Dera Sacha Sauda. After his arrest, Mintoo took over as the outfit’s chief and through him the Pakistani spy agency ISI was trying to revive KLF’s base in Punjab.
Investigators said that Mintoo received over `7 lakh as funds in the past couple of years through the ISI’s ‘Hawala’ network from some Sikh separatist leaders who are operating from Pakistan, England’s Lancaster, Germany and Canada. The funds were provided for reviving KLF in Punjab before the upcoming Punjab assembly elections by recruiting prisoners lodged in Nabha jail.
Over ten gunmen posing as policemen stormed the Nabha jail around 9am on Sunday and freed Mintoo, Kashmeer, Shekhon and three other gangsters after indiscriminate fire.