Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi sent to Amritsar police remand till July 6

Amritsar police commissioner Arun Pal Singh said Bishnoi’s name emerged during the probe into Kandowalia’s killing at a private hospital on Auugst 3; Kandowalia faced 15 criminal cases, including those of murder and attempted murder

An Amritsar court on Tuesday sent gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, the mastermind of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala’s murder, to police custody till July 6 for questioning in the killing of gangster Ranbir Singh, alias Rana Kandowalia, in an Amritsar hospital last year.

Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi being escorted out in a bullet-proof vehicle under tight security from the Amritsar court complex on Tuesday. (Sameer Sehgal/HT)

Chief judicial magistrate (CJM) Supinder Singh sent Bishnoi to eight-day police custody after he was brought in a bullet-proof vehicle on transit remand from Mansa under tight security by the Amritsar commissionerate’s police on Monday.

Amritsar police commissioner Arun Pal Singh said Bishnoi’s name emerged during the probe into Kandowalia’s killing at a private hospital. Kandowalia, who had been facing 15 criminal cases, including those of murder and attempted murder, succumbed to injuries on August 4, 2021, a day after he was shot at by four unidentified persons in an Amritsar-based private hospital where he had gone to enquire about his cousin sister’s health.

The assailants had pumped in six bullets into Rana’s body. On the day of his death, a post from a Facebook account on the name of Punjab’s notorious gangster Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, who has been facing dozens of criminal cases and lodged in jail, claimed the responsibility of the killing. The post had claimed that one Mandeep Batala, also a history-sheeter, killed Kandowalia at the instance of Bhagwanpuria for supporting gangsters Vicky Gounder and Devinder Bambiha in the past.

After some time of the murder, police booked Bhagwanpuria and four assailants, identified as Money Rayya, Mandeep Singh, alias Toofan, Happy Shah, and a Haryana-based man, for murder. Later, six more persons were named in the case for sheltering the accused.

During investigation, Happy Shah, who was arrested later, told the police that the conspiracy to kill Kandowalia was hatched by Jaggu Bhagwanpuria and Goldy Brar, who is also a prime accused in Sidhu Moosewala’s killing. When Kandowalia was killed, Jaggu Bhagwanpuria was in Delhi’s Tihar jail, where Lawrence Bishnoi was also lodged, a senior police official said on condition of anonymity.

“During the investigation, it was found that a few years ago, gangster Lama Patti was shot dead in a gangwar in Patti. Lama Patti was an associate of Jaggu Bhagwanpuria. And Jaggu was thinking that Kandowalia was also involved in the killing of Lama Patti,” said the official.

Kandowalia was one of the key accused in the 2016 Patti gang-war between the gangs led by Bobby Malhotra and Devinder Bambiha that left gangster Dilbag Singh, alias Lama Patti dead. Kandowalia had surrendered before the then special task force (STF) headed by then inspector general (IG) Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh in February 2017.