Only two out of the five Sikh hardliners on 20 most-wanted men list survive in Pakistan
Neeraj Bagga
Amritsar, July 14
Only two out of the five Sikh hardliners, who figured on a list of 20 most-wanted men sought by India released following an attack on the Parliament House in December, 2001, survive.
They are still believed to be hiding in Pakistan under the patronage of the Pakistani government. These two are Wadhawan Singh Babbar over-70-year-old chief of Babbar Khalsa International, and Ranjit Singh Neeta, chief of Khalistan Zindabad Force.
Babbar Khalsa International was involved in an insurgency in Punjab during the 1980s. Its chief Babbar is wanted in over a dozen cases of sedition, murder and in connection with the assassination of Punjab’s then Chief Minister Beant Singh.
Neeta, chief of Khalistan Zindabad Force, is wanted in cases of murder, bomb blasts and smuggling of arms.
It is learnt that after the assassination Paramjit Singh Panjwar (63), a key leader of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), in Lahore on May 6 last year, both Babbar and Neeta were relocated to an undisclosed location.
Besides Panjwar, Lakhbir Singh Rode and Gajinder Singh also passed away in Pakistan. Panjwar was accused of trying to revive the Sikh insurgency in Punjab. He was wanted in more than a dozen cases of murder, treason, conspiracy and arms smuggling.
Rode, a leader of the International Sikh Youth Federation, was wanted in cases of arms smuggling and conspiracy to attack government leaders in Delhi.
Gajinder Singh, a founder of Dal Khalsa, along with four other Sikh activists, had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane en route Delhi-Srinagar-Lahore on September 29, 1981, nine days after the arrest of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Gajinder was arrested by Pakistan after he hijacked the plane to Lahore. In 2008, Gajinder had announced his willingness to return to India on certain conditions, but it did not materialise.
The Indian Government has been seeking the extradition of 20 most-wanted terrorists for a long time.
After the Shehbaz Sharif government came to power in Pakistan, the intelligence circles here are abuzz that the new government in the neighbouring country was trying to recreate the doctrine of bleed India with a thousand cuts was exercised during the tenure of the Nawaz Sharif government.
Ambush of Indian military convoys in the Jammu region, besides sighting of suspected people in Army uniform in Gurdaspur and Pathankot, both border districts with road connectivity to Jammu and Kashmir, points towards Pakistan’s bleed India strategy.