Punjab Director General of Police Dinkar Gupta on Tuesday said a terrorist attack has been thwarted with the arrest of Saroop Singh, a highly radicalised operative, linked to foreign-based terrorist entities.
“The accused was apprehended by the Tarn Taran police on suspicion at a checkpoint on the Amritsar-Harike road on Monday [August 30]. Two live Chinese-made P-86 mark hand grenades were recovered from him,” he stated.
The development came at a time when Punjab has been witnessing a huge influx of grenades and RDX-laden tiffin boxes and other arms and ammunition, signalling major attempts made by terrorist leaders and anti-national elements based abroad to disturb peace and communal harmony in the border State.
On August 8, the Amritsar rural police recovered five hand grenades of similar mark along with a tiffin box bomb from Daleke village in Lopoke, while the State Special Operation Cell, Amritsar, on August 16, recovered two hand grenades of same make and model (P-86), alongwith other weapons from Amritpal Singh and Shammi. Similarly, the Kapurthala police recovered a consignment consisting of two live hand grenades, one live tiffin bomb and other explosive material from the possession of Gurmukh Singh Brar and his associate from Phagwara on August 20.
‘Motivated to carry out terror acts’
“During preliminary investigation, Saroop Singh revealed that he came in contact with foreign-based terror handlers over the social media and was further radicalised, cultivated by them and motivated to carry out terror acts in Punjab,” Mr. Gupta observed.
The accused further disclosed that his foreign-based handlers had arranged a consignment of 2 hand grenades for him and he had conducted recce of a few sensitive targets in Amritsar and Ludhiana.
“A training video sent by his foreign handlers explaining how to successfully explode a hand grenade has also been recovered from the mobile phone of the accused,” he added.
