Jagtar Singh ‘Tara’ will be deported to India within a month. The assertion was made by the Punjab State police chief Sumedh Singh Saini on Wednesday.
He maintained that the Punjab Police has already completed the formalities for taking the custody of militant Jagtar Singh Tara aka Gurmeet Singh arrested in Thailand on Monday. Tara is one of the main assassins of Punjab’s former Chief Minister Beant Singh. “A competent court in Thailand has ordered his extradition on Tuesday. What we have learnt is that as per procedural part at that end, the concerned person is kept there for a month and then is extradited,” he said.
Saini said that Punjab Police had “completed the entire paper work, and all the formalities in September last year including the amended warrant of arrest in the name of Gurmeet Singh son of Kaka Singh which Tara has presently been using”. The Indian Government had been in touch with Thai authorities to nab Jagtar ‘Tara’ Singh, who had been hiding in that country for months, probably under different identity. Besides being an co-accused in the Beant Singh assassination case, Tara escape from high security Chandigarh’s burial jail along with two others, on January 22, 2004, in a daring jail break.
Saini, at the same time, submitted that the maintenance of peace and communal harming is the first priority of the State Government. “The proactive approach with which the Punjab Police has gone after the terrorist in foreign lands who were activated by the ISI and want to disturb the peace and harmony, there is no doubt about that. We are very clear on that,” he said.