Sachin Tyagi, the Personal Security Officer of sacked Uttarakhand Minorities Commission chairman Sukhdev Singh Namdhari, who had gone with Namdhari to the Chhatarpur farmhouse where liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his younger brother Hardeep were killed in a shoot-out last month, has been arrested.
Sachin has been booked for his role in a conspiracy that led to the murder of Hardeep. Similar charges have been slapped against Namdhari who is currently in police custody.
Twenty-seven-year old Tyagi, who was attached with Namdhari as his PSO since the beginning of this year, had been questioned earlier in connection with the shoot-out. Back then, nothing incriminating had come against him and he was let off on the condition that he would join the investigations again as and when required.
According to the police, Tyagi’s entry in Delhi was unauthorised as he had failed to intimate his senior officials in the Uttrakhand Police about his and Namdhari’s departure to the Capital. The police added that Tyagi, a constable in Uttrakhand Police, had also used his official weapon in an unauthorised manner by firing towards Hardeep.
Namdhari himself was in possession of 0.30 bore pistol but did not possess a valid licence for bringing the weapon to Delhi, said the police.
The police had on Sunday told the court while seeking extension of Namdhari’s custody that he had “handed over the pistol and remaining cartridges” to his associate Satnam alias Satte through Tyagi and another man, Sonu, with the direction that the pistol be taken back to his native place.
Namdhari had purportedly disclosed that Satnam “got the pistol cleaned through a person known to him”. Following the disclosure, Namdhari has been charged with destruction of evidence.
Efforts are on to arrest Satte and six other alleged accomplices of Namdhari who have purportedly fled to Ludhiana, Gurdaspur and Amritsar. In the remand application, the police had told the court that Namdhari has agreed to accompany them to Punjab to their hide-outs. The police had also said that Namdhari could also assist the investigators in recovering some firearms and other weapons such as baseball bats and sticks taken allegedly to throw out Hardeep’s men from 42 DLF Farms.
Meanwhile,the ballistic report of the shootout, believed to be a vital link in the case, could take at least another 10 days, said a source. “The reason for the delay could be that the number of weapons taken to the farmhouse was large. Furthermore, a bullet that had initially not been accounted for was recovered at the shoot-out site on December 1, almost a fortnight after the incident,” said the source.
