E-Paper
3 associates of Ludhiana bomb blast accused held with 4-kg heroin
Police said the trio was working for the network the kingpins of which are Surmukh Singh alias Sammu and Dilbagh Singh Baggo, who are the main accused in the bomb blast at the Ludhiana court complex
The anti-drug special task force (STF) of the Punjab police on Monday arrested three associates of the two main accused in the Ludhiana bomb blast case and recovered 4-kg heroin, smuggled from Pakistan, from their possession.
The arrested accused have been identified as Balwinder Singh and Guravtar Singh alias Sonu of Chao Alah Bakash village, and Avtar Singh of Chak Pandoori village in Amritsar.
Police said the trio was working for the network the kingpins of which are Surmukh Singh alias Sammu and Dilbagh Singh Baggo, who are the main accused in the bomb blast at the Ludhiana court complex in which former cop Gagandeep Singh was killed while allegedly planting the ammunition.
STF’s deputy superintendent of police Vawinder Mahajan said, “in May, a case of smuggling was registered at the STF police station in Mohali. Following the investigation into the case, four persons, including Baggo, were arrested at the initial stage and heroin was recovered from them. Baggo, during his interrogation, had told us that he had been working along with Sammu, who was arrested around a month ago in a case of seizure of an improvised explosive device (IED). When Baggo was further interrogated, he had revealed that at the behest of Sammu, he had retrieved an IED from the border and handed it over to Gagandeep Singh in Ludhiana.”
Mahajan said that after Baggo’s statement, Sammu was also brought on production warrant for his questioning. Sammu also confessed that the Ludhiana blast’s IED was smuggled from Pakistan at the behest of Harpreet Singh alias Happy who is living in Malaysia.
“On Sunday, during further investigation of the case, we arrested Avtar and Guravtar and recovered one kg heroin from their possession. Similarly, Balwinder Singh was also arrested and he confessed that he had concealed 3 kg heroin smuggled from Pakistan near the international border. The trio had been working for Sammu and Baggo. More names have emerged with the arrest of the trio and our teams are working to nab them,” Mahajan said.
He said their teams have also initiated the process to issue red corner notice against Happy Malaysia, who is in contact with ISI agents and Pakistani smugglers. Happy is a relative of Sammu, who was operating the network with money received from Happy.
