A week after a Dera Sacha Sauda follower Pardeep Singh — an accused in 2015 Bargari sacrilege cases — was gunned down outside his shop in Kotkapura during morning hours, the Punjab Police on Thursday arrested three persons, including two shooters in Hoshiarpur.
The two arrested shooters have been identified as 26-year-old Manpreet Singh alias Mani and 22-year-old Bhupinder Singh alias Goldy — both residents of Faridkot, while the third arrested accused has been identified as Baljit Singh alias Manna, a resident of Sri Muktsar Sahib who provided logistic support to the shooters, said the state Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav.
“Punjab Police had established the identity of two of the main shooters — Manpreet Mani and Bhupinder Goldy — on the very first day and an extensive manhunt was launched by the Police in this regard…In an intelligence-led joint operation, Counter Intelligence Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur Police, and Faridkot Police nabbed both the shooters from the outskirts of Hoshiarpur district, when they were waiting to catch a bus to flee to Himachal Pradesh,” he said.
DGP Yadav said that both the arrested shooters have criminal cases, pertaining to extortion and other crimes, pending against them and their interrogation is expected to unravel the entire conspiracy hatched by the Canada-based terrorist Goldy Brar and his network of associates, who have acted as facilitators in this crime.
In another success, DGP Gaurav Yadav said that Faridkot Police, in a simultaneous operation, has also arrested Baljit Manna from Jaito area in Faridkot for providing logistic support to the three Haryana-based shooters, including two minors and one identified as Jatinder Jeetu. The trio Haryana-based shooters were arrested by the Delhi Special Cell, a few days back.
Faridkot Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Rajpal Singh said that after the Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMIC) granted police custody of children in conflict with law (CCL) for five days, the Police have brought both the minor accused for questioning and further investigations are on.
An FIR, dated November 10, 2022, had been registered under sections 302, 307, 148, 149 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 25, 54, 59 of the Arms Act at Police Station City Kotkapura.
With the arrest of two more shooters, five of the total six accused have been arrested and the search is on to nab the sixth. As per the CCTV footage of the crime scene, six shooters had pumped over 30 bullets in Pardeep when he was opening his dairy shop in the morning. The police, as per investigations so far, claimed that the two modules — one comprising shooters from Punjab and one from Haryana — executed the murder.
Manni and Goldy belong to the Punjab-based module of Canada-based Goldy Brar’s gang, while the three shooters of the Haryana module, including two juveniles, were arrested from Patiala by the Delhi Police special cell in less than 24 hours of the murder on November 10.
Notably, Pardeep Singh was an accused in two cases of sacrilege after a ‘bir’ of Guru Granth Sahib was stolen from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village on June 1, 2015, and after torn pages of a ‘bir’ were found scattered near Bargari gurdwara on October 12, 2015. He was out on bail in the cases.