Cell terrorism

The Delhi Police has been on the trail of Khalistan terrorists inside Tihar jail who masterminded kidnappings and movement of explosives through telephonic links with mafia groups outside.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in New Delhi

THERE is reason to believe that Khalistan terrorists have regrouped, with New Delhi's maximum security Tihar Jail as their impromptu operational headquarters. In August, investigators of the Delhi Police's Crime Branch discovered that top terrorists held in the jail were using cellphones to orchestrate deliveries of explosives and arms for a new offensive. Leaders of the Khalistan Liberation Front (KLF) and the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) had tied up with Uttar Pradesh-based mafia dons to carry out kidnappings in order to raise funds for this enterprise.

The discovery of terrorist activity in Tihar Jail is significant on two counts. First, it illustrates the state of India's prison apparatus in general, and that of Tihar Jail in particular. Secondly, coming in the context of a general revival of the religious Right in Punjab, the activities at the jail indicate that the violent campaign for Khalistan is again gathering momentum.

Police officials learnt of the activities of terrorists inside the jail almost by accident. The first information came from intelligence officials of the Punjab Police as they monitored the movement of Harnek Singh Bhap of the KLF. A key leader of the KLF's Navneet Singh Qadian faction, Bhap had reactivated contacts in the Jalandhar area in early May. Sources told the Punjab Police that Bhap, along with a group of associates, had planned to kidnap a student of an exclusive South Delhi public school for ransom. The KLF was to have carried out the kidnapping and handed over the child to a mafia group that operates in western Uttar Pradesh, to be kept until a ransom was secured. The ransom, officials say, was to have been shared in an 80:20 ratio between the KLF and the mafia group, led by Babloo Shrivastava.

ANU PUSHKARNA
Tihar jail.

Warnings from Punjab's Director-General of Police P.C. Dogra to his Delhi counterpart V.N. Singh sent the Delhi Police into overdrive. Police officials knew that even if the child under threat was provided protection, the KLF could shift its sights to another target. Several South Delhi schools, where the children of much of the city's elite study, were quietly provided security by armed police personnel. This served to deter the kidnappers until the schools closed for the summer vacation on May 14. But the threat remained. Informants told the Delhi Police that the KLF and the mafia group had now shifted their attention to prominent businessmen, including zarda manufacturer R.K. Gupta.

What the Delhi Police needed to know was just how the Shrivastava gang, whose entire leadership was lodged in Tihar Jail, had negotiated the kidnap deal with the KLF. Suspicion centred on two top KLF terrorists, also held in Tihar - Devinder Pal Singh Deepak and Daya Singh Lahoria. Extradited from West Germany and the United States respectively, Deepak and Lahoria were key members of the KLF. Their most important terrorist crimes included the abduction of Romanian diplomat Liviu Radu in 1992, an attempt on the life of Youth Congress(I) leader Maninderjeet Singh Bitta in New Delhi in 1993 and the kidnapping of Congress(I) leader Ram Niwas Mirdha's son Rajinder Mirdha in 1995 (Frontline, March 11, 1995). The last of these had been carried out to secure Deepak's release from prison, and a subsequent police operation resulted in the elimination of KLF supremo Navneet Singh Qadian.

Lahoria and Deepak have a history of kidnappings. In April 1994, they played a key role in the kidnapping of six-year-old Varun Bajaj, the son of an industrialist. Varun was released for a ransom of Rs. 3.2 crores. The Deepak Tyagi mafia had organised the support structure for this kidnapping, providing the KLF with safehouses and transport in NOIDA, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Dehra Dun. One member of the Tyagi gang, Amit Jaiswal, is believed to have moved to Australia on a false passport and with his share of the ransom - over Rs. 25 lakhs. A year earlier, the KLF had kidnapped industrialist Mukesh Jain, who was hidden in Patna with the help of a local mafia outfit.

ALL that the Delhi Police had at the outset were five cellphone numbers provided by the Punjab Police. Surveillance led Crime Branch investigators to some bizarre findings. Mobile phones activate the radio cells nearest to their users' locations. But the five phones activated only a single cell, the one nearest to the Tihar Jail. Then the police found that there were 35 and not just five phones active inside the jail. Uttar Pradesh-based mafia leaders and several jailed terrorists used phones with pre-paid cards smuggled in by visitors and friendly prison staff. Delhi Police moles inside the prison said cellphone instruments were being passed around from one user to the other, each possessing an individual card. "It was amazing," says a Delhi Police official. "One criminal asked for a commercial sex worker to be arranged for a jail official. Another time, Lahoria told an associate to give a gold watch to another official on the occasion of a family wedding."

However, petty corruption was the least of the Delhi Police's concerns. The BKI, it transpired, had already cut a deal with criminals in the prison for the delivery of a massive consignment of explosives. Top BKI operative Gursewak Singh Babla, charged, among other crimes, with a role in the assassination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, and Babla's associate Mokham Singh, had used their jailhouse friendships well. Ravi Prakash, charged with being the contract killer in the sensational triple murder in a Delhi health club, was recruited to arrange the transport of explosives to a BKI safehouse in New Delhi, along with his co-accused, Kamal Kumar 'Pinky'. The two in turn roped in Satvinder Pal Singh 'Twinkle' and his brother Harbhajan Singh 'Pepsi', gangsters accused of killing two members of a rival gang in a shoot-out last year at the Tis Hazari courts in New Delhi.

The deal between the BKI and the four Tihar inmates was simple. Babla and Mokham Singh had arranged with the BKI's Pakistan-based supremo Wadhawa Singh Babbar for a consignment of explosives to be placed inside a wood along the road from Jammu to the Samba border. Amarjeet Singh, an Amritsar-based associate of Satvinder 'Twinkle', would arrange for a truck to be driven to Jammu. There, its drivers would be given the precise location of the cache by the two smugglers who had arranged its transport across the border. After picking it up, they would drive the explosives to the BKI safehouse in New Delhi.

However, things did not go quite as planned. The smugglers' instructions proved inadequate, and Babla had to contact Wadhawa Singh again to ask for more directions. It took a second trip before Twinkle's associates could find the hidden explosives.

Crime Branch officials were waiting for the Haryana-registered truck when it arrived on August 12. Eighteen kilograms of RDX, or Research Department Explosive, had been stashed away between the rim and the stepney of the truck. Also hidden away were four ABCD timers, highly sophisticated electronic devices that enable a bomb to be programmed to explode at any time within 194 days. An AK-47 assault rifle, two .30 pistols, eight grenades, ammunition and detonators also emerged as the truck was searched. Delhi Police officials say that both Amarjeet Singh and the truck's drivers, Raj Kumar and Gurcharan Singh, knew what their consignment was, but had no terrorist background. "This is Delhi's largest ever recovery of explosives," says Crime Branch Deputy Commissioner of Police Karnal Singh. "We believe the explosives were intended for attacks on politicians, which Babla was organising from inside the jail."

While the BKI operatives have been charged for the explosives haul, investigation on the KLF continues. As Tihar Jail officials scuttled for cover, the whole process has become mired in feuds between sections of the police establishment. Delhi's Inspector-General of Prisons R.N. Gupta despatched a bitter letter to Punjab police chief Dogra, complaining that Tihar's administration was being unfairly maligned. Gupta's complaints, sources told Frontline, led to the intervention of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, which in turn confronted him with evidence of corruption in the jail. Raids were subsequently carried out in Tihar by the prison administration and the cellphones were recovered. However, barring the interrogation of a constable, no action has so far been taken by the jail authorities.

Although the cellphones in the Tihar Jail are silent for now, Delhi Police officials believe that it is only a matter of time before the KLF and BKI operatives lodged in the jail resume their activities. Intelligence reports suggest that the KLF's Harnek Bhap remains active in the Jalandhar area. Officials said that Bhap had facilitated the Mirdha kidnapping by posing as a well-off businessman. A gymnasium that he set up in Jaipur was inaugurated by a senior officer of the Rajasthan Police and was used as a cover for the KLF's operation. KLF members in prison are known to have been in contact with operatives and sympathisers abroad and have reactivated old weapons smuggling routes. "The fact of the matter," says Karnal Singh, "is that both the BKI and the KLF were able to establish contact with west Uttar Pradesh mafia groups and other criminals for joint operations."

Karnal Singh asks: "We could stop the BKI and ensure that the KLF terminated its operation. But how long will it be before they try again?" The question is pertinent with regard to the events in Tihar jail, which happened just months after the recovery of RDX and PETN in May from inside the cell in the Burail Jail, Chandigarh, of Jagtar Singh Hawara, an accused in the Beant Singh assassination case. Hawara had used his mobile phone not only to arrange the delivery of explosives, which came concealed in boxes of sweets, but to order fast food from a pizza outlet. The bulk of the 124 telephone calls Hawara made from his cell were to four numbers in the U.S., now identified as belonging to overseas backers of the BKI. Sitla Prasad Mishra, the Assistant Warden of the Burail Jail, is facing trial for the security lapse, on the basis of records which show that the pizza deliveries were confirmed by the fast food outlet on his official telephone number. Human rights activist Jaspal Dhillon and Hawara's counsel Daljit Singh Rajput have been arrested for their alleged roles in the affair.

"THE Future Still Belongs To Us", proclaimed a booklet believed to have been authored by the Sikh Students Federation's Bittoo while he was held in the Nabha Jail last year. Attacking the centrist Shiromani Akali Dal leadership, the booklet asserted that the Khalistan movement was still legitimate and was certain to revive sooner or later. The booklet was just one of a series of venomously communal publications to appear in Punjab over the last year, ranging from Shahadat International (Martyrdom International) to the Spokesman and affiliated to diverse right-wing factions. Battles between centrists and fundamentalists within the Sikh community, and among factions of religious chauvinists, suggest another battle for control in the community. In the process, Tihar Jail has become a crucible of sorts that helps forge the future of the Khalistan movement.

Table of Contents

Home | The Hindu | Business Line | Sportstar