Chandigarh, December 31
The interrogation of four suspects in Ludhiana’s Shingaar cinema blasts has revealed that militancy in Punjab continues to get financial aid from their foreign-based supporters, while “safe places” are still available in Punjab where militants can hide easily.
The hideouts were cultivated on the basis of personal friendships or the four suspects presented themselves as “ persons fighting against religious oppression”, said sources.
Sources in the police said that investigators have found that the four arrested suspects were getting a sort of “monthly salary” from their foreign-based handlers. Firstly, the suspects were given money to buy an Esteem car and later a sum was transferred through “Western Union” money transfer on a regular basis. The police is checking out details of the people who transferred the money and who handed over the cash to these four in India. More arrests are likely to follow.
DGP N.P.S. Aulakh yesterday claimed that the four suspects - Gurpreet Singh, Sandeep Singh, Palwinder
Singh, alias Pappu, and Ravinder Singh, alias Rinku - had links with the Babbar Khalsa International.
At least two of them had trained in Pakistan. Bhavdeep Singh, a brother of Sandeep, was arrested earlier.
The police has also found that the four suspects, like well-trained militants, had developed a code language to speak to their handlers abroad. No mobile phones were used for communications. Rather like ordinary people, the four suspects went to STD PCOs and called their contacts in the USA and the UK and spoke in a coded language to avoid detection.
The police is tight-lipped about the identity of the foreign people. These people could be very well just front men for somebody behind the scenes.
It is the mode of hiding that had come as a surprise for the cops. The four never left Punjab. They just changed their hideouts and lived normal lives. They moved from one “safe house” to another, shifting locations in Balachaur, Khanna, Amloh, Anandpur Sahib, Amritsar and Ludhiana. Sources said the safe houses were those where they had personal relations with a member of the host family or had lured youngsters to help them “in the fight”.
Police sources said this means finding a “safe house” was not a problem for militants in Punjab. Actually these four used to be visiting a friend Bhupinder Singh in Balachaur even before the blast that was carried out in October. He was arrested within days of the blast, and that sent the police on a trail across the state.
It may be mentioned here that Jagtar Singh Hawara and Paramjit Singh Bheora were also arrested from within Punjab. The two are assassins of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh. They, along with two others, escaped from a prison in Chandigarh and were arrested months later in Punjab and were leading normal lives. Hawara and Bheora were hardcore militants. However, these four suspects could have preferred to leave Punjab, but they did not, said an official.
