NIA has unearthed a chilling nexus of national and international criminals who are sympathetic to the Khalistani cause in the murder of RSS leader Jagdish Kumar Gagneja in 2016. 3 years after the brutal shooting of the Gagneja, the NIA has filed a charge-sheet against 11 accused persons in the case at the NIA Special court in Mohali. Brig. (Retd.) Jagdish Kumar Gagneja was the Sah Sanghchalak of RSS of Punjab Pranth.
In the late evening of 6th August 2016, Gagneja was shot dead by two motor cycle borne assailants who had muffled their face while he was at the Red Cross Market area of Jalandhar. During investigation, the NIA was found that the killing of Brig. (Retd.) Jagdish Kumar Gagneja was part of a Trans-national conspiracy hatched by senior leadership of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF).
The NIA further says that 8 acts of targeted Killings/Attempted Killings were executed as part of this conspiracy between January 2016 and October 2017 in Punjab. All the persons targeted belonged to specific communities and organizations and the objective of the conspiracy was to destabilize the law and order situation in Punjab and to revive the terrorism in the State.
How the Trans-national conspiracy operated
The NIA investigations found that the conspiracy had its foot-prints in several countries including, Pakistan, UK, Australia, France, Italy and the UAE. As part of the conspiracy, large amounts of funds were supplied from Italy, Australia and the UK to the perpetrators of the Killings namely, Hardeep Singh and Ramandeep Singh. These funds were used by them to purchase weapons for executing the killings as well as other logistics.
The conspiracy included recruitment and training of Hardeep Singh and Ramandeep Singh in Italy and Dubai, UAE, respectively. The NIA charge-sheet says that the Hardeep Singh is the permanent resident of Italy while Ramandeep Singh belongs to Ludhiana. Both were trained by one Gursharanbir Singh, a UK national. Another UK national, Jagtar Singh Johal, who has been arrested in the case was involved in the funding of the conspiracy. Day to day co-ordination of the conspiracy was done by Pakistan based Harmeet Singh.
All the accused persons have been charged under several sections of the IPC, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and Arms Act of 1959 as applicable against each of the accused persons including those who sold or facilitated the sale of weapons to the accused persons to carry out the killings.
The persons charge-sheeted in this case are: Hardeep Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Dharminder Singh, Anil Kumar, Jagtar Singh Johal alias Jaggi, Amaninder Singh alias Mindu, Manpreet Singh alias Mani, Ravipal Singh alias Bhunda, Harmeet Singh alias Happy (Suspected to be in Pakistan), Gurjinder Singh alias Shastri (Suspected to be in Italy) and Gursharanbir Singh alias Gurusharan Singh Wahiwala (Suspected to be in UK).
