M A I N   N E W S

Badals face threat to life, says Intelligence Bureau
Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 5
Within eight months of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) warning about attempts to “revive” Sikh militancy in Punjab, the central snooping agency has now warned that the Punjab Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister face threat to their lives from the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), a militant group.

The BKI is the same outfit that assassinated former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in August 1995 when a human bomb, Dilawar Singh, blew himself up outside the secretariat in Chandigarh. The BKI is on the Union Ministry of Home Affairs’ list of banned organisations.

The IB, in its advisory sent to DGPs and chief secretaries of all states, has warned that the BKI has devised a unique method to target the father-son duo of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal. The outfit has sent two US nationals of Punjabi origin to Nepal, whose presence has been confirmed by local operatives. These persons have been tasked with infiltrating into a company providing public address systems for political rallies. Such equipment, like microphones and speakers, is usually on the dais when politicians speak. The plan of the BKI is to use the public address system to smuggle in an improvised explosive device (IED) and trigger a blast. Over the past two years, several operatives of the BKI have been nabbed with RDX, mostly supplied from Pakistan.

Since the two Punjab politicians address rallies for their political allies in areas having sizeable Punjabi or Sikh population, the IB has sent the advisory to all DGPs asking them to up the vigil and scan all equipment to be used at such rallies. The Badals, like other Punjab leaders, are popular in Punjabi-dominated pockets in Haryana, Uttarakhand, Western Uttar Pradesh and even Bihar. Some of these areas border Nepal.

The IB has said that the planning to target Badals was made at a meeting organised at Kongen, Germany, by BKI’s elusive militant Resham Singh. The militant has links in Germany and Italy.

In August last year, while addressing a conference of DGPs of all states, the then Director of IB, Rajiv Mathur, had warned that “inimical agencies” from “international bases” were trying to revive Sikh militancy in Punjab by forging an alliance between Sikh militant groups and the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

“There have been clear attempts by inimical agencies abroad to reactivate Sikh terrorist elements, forge nexus between the LeT and terrorist groups like the Babbar Khalsa International and the Khalistan Zindabad Force ,” Mathur had said.