Jailed Lawrence Bishnoi’s call to Pakistan-based gangster must be probed: Bikram Majithia

Chandigarh, June 18

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today urged the Union government to order a high-level probe into the activities of notorious gangster Lawrence Bishnoi from the jail. By indulging in a video call with Pakistan-based gangster Shahzad Bhatti from a jail in Gujarat compromising the national security, the SAD said.

Asserting that this was not the first time that Bishnoi had compromised national security, senior SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia said, “The sequence of events since the last several years indicate that the gangster has a free rein in jail, whether he is incarcerated in Delhi, Punjab or Gujarat. This needs to be stopped immediately and the Centre should take concrete steps in this regard.”

Majithia said Bishnoi planned and executed the broad daylight assassination of noted singer Sidhu Moosewala from Tihar jail in Delhi, where the Aam Aadmi Party-led government is in power. “Sophisticated weapons were used to kill Moosewala which could have only come from across the border through drones from Pakistan,” he said.

He said even after Moosewala’s murder, the gangster gave an interview to a prominent journalist from jail and when the Punjab Police tried to deny that the interview had been conducted from a state jail, the gangster gave another interview with the same clothes to prove his point. “Even though Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann formed an SIT to probe the matter after a petition was filed in the court, there have been zero results in the case.”

3-member poll panel for Jalandhar (West) bypoll

Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal today constituted a three-member panel to recommend the party’s candidate for Jalandhar West Assembly bypoll scheduled for next month. The members of the committee – Jagir Kaur, Jathedar Gurpartap Singh Wadala and Dr Sukhvinder Singh Sukhi – will also steer and manage the party’s campaign for the bypoll, according to a party press release.

Stating that Bishnoi continued with his criminal activities from jail, Majithia said this was seen when the gangster’s hit men struck actor Salman Khan’s house a few months back. He said the recent incident in which Bishnoi did a video call to Pakistan gangster Bhatti from a jail in Gujarat indicated that his collusion with anti-national elements in Pakistan was active and alive.

“He possesses the capability to import arms from Pakistan through drones or other means and use them to further his criminal empire. This is a direct threat to national security and should be tackled effectively,” he said.

Majithia also demanded a thorough central probe into the case involving 43,000 calls made by gangsters from jails in Punjab in the last few years.