Chandigarh: Punjab Police has arrested two alleged perpetrators of a recent blast outside the BJP headquarters in Chandigarh, taking the total number of arrests in the case to seven, a senior police officer said Sunday.
The arrested are allegedly part of an ISI-backed module, and they were taking directions from their handlers based in Germany and Portugal, police said.
The police arrested Gurtej Singh and Amanpreet Singh, from Haryana’s Rewari, on the night of April 4 in a joint operation with Haryana Police, Punjab Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav said.
Both of them are residents of the Morinda area in Punjab’s Rupnagar and were working as bike operators at Rapido, Yadav said.
In this case, the police earlier arrested five accused, Mandeep, Rubal Chauhan, Charanjit Singh, Jasvir Singh and Balwinder.
April 1, around 5 pm, a blast occurred outside the BJP’s state headquarters in Chandigarh’s Sector 37. The explosion dealt damage to nearby parked vehicles. No injuries were reported in the incident.
The police earlier surmised it to be a crude bomb, which later emerged to be a hand grenade, he said.
Revealing Amanpreet’s criminal record, the DGP said, He was involved in a theft for which an FIR was registered in Mohali, and another FIR was registered against him for snatching in Himachal’s Bilaspur.
According to the police, Gurtej Singh came in contact with Portugal-based Baljot Singh, alias Jot, six months ago through social media, who is the prime handler of this module.
March 28, Gurtej was tasked to collect a consignment of grenades and other weapons from the Balachaur area in Punjab’s Nawanshahr, the DGP said.
The consignment containing two grenades, a pistol and 10 cartridges was collected by Gurtej, Mandeep and Rubal Chauhan from Jasvir Singh alias Jassi, he said.
Jot had given direction to Gurtej for target identification and conducting recce, the DGP said, adding that Gurtej roped in Amanpreet, and both were bike operators working at Rapido and were promised Rs 2 lakh each for the task.
Amanpreet lobbed the grenade, while Gurtej made a video of it, the DGP said, adding that their foreign handlers shared online training videos on how to hurl a grenade and also gave directions on mobile.
How this consignment came, we are tracing the backward linkage of it, said Yadav.
Earlier, five individuals, part of a module allegedly backed by Pakistan’s ISI, were arrested in the same matter.
Saturday, the DGP said the Counter-Intelligence wing of Punjab Police, in a joint operation with Chandigarh Police, had solved the Chandigarh grenade attack case.
The police recovered one hand grenade and one .30 bore Zigana pistol along with ammunition from their possession.
A preliminary investigation revealed that the module was backed by the Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence and operated by foreign-based handlers located in Portugal and Germany.
Saturday, Assistant Inspector General, State Special Operations Cell (SSOC), SAS Nagar, Deepak Pareek, said a consignment of hand grenades, arms and live cartridges changed hands several times before being handed over to the final perpetrators.
The police have booked the accused under sections of the Arms Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) at the SSOC SAS Nagar Police Station.
Within hours of the blast, a 10-second video surfaced on the internet showing a man pulling the pin from a grenade and throwing it, with another one recording the act.
The video did not reveal their faces. They fled the scene moments before the blast. The CCTV camera also recorded the incident.
Sukhjinder Singh Babbar of the banned Babbar Khalsa International, in a social media post the same day, claimed responsibility for the explosion.