IANS/Chandigarh
A court in Punjab’s Patiala town yesterday sent extradited terrorist Jagtar Singh Tara - convicted in the assassination of then
Punjab chief minister Beant Singh - to five-day police custody.
Tara was produced before the court of the duty magistrate by Punjab Police in connection with the murder of Rashtriya Sikh Sangat
chief Rulda Singh.
The leader was shot at in his house in Patiala district July 28, 2009.
Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) chief Tara was extradited by authorities in Thailand on Friday and a Punjab police team was given
custody of the terrorist in Bangkok.
Tara was nabbed in Thailand January 6 following a coordinated operation of central agencies, Punjab Police and Thailand police.
The counter-intelligence wing of Punjab police had tracked down Tara in Thailand.
A Bangkok court January 6 ordered that Tara will be extradited from Thailand to India.
Tara, aged around 40, was one of the men convicted in the sensational assassination of then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh by
a human bomb at the heavily-guarded Punjab secretariat complex here Aug 31, 1995.
Tara, who was using an assumed name Gurmeet Singh, was living in disguise near the beach resort town of Pattaya in Thailand.
Thai authorities said he was living illegally in the country for over four months.
Three men - Tara, Jagtar Singh Hawara, Paramjit Singh Bhaura - and their accomplice Devi Singh, a murder convict living with them
in the same prison barrack, had made a sensational escape by digging a 104-feet-long tunnel in the high-security Burail jail in
Chandigarh on the night of January 21-22, 2004.
Hawara and Bhaura were re-arrested by security agencies but Tara remained elusive.
A Hyderabadi engineer, who was arrested while on his way to Syria via Dubai to join the Islamic State group, planned to return to
India to carry out anti-national activities, police said yesterday.
Police, who announced the arrest of 32-year-old Salman Mohiuddin on Friday night, are questioning him to gather more information,
including identification of the youth he was in touch with in India.
The US-returned techie was arrested at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport here late Thursday when he was leaving for Dubai.
Police said that ever since returning from the US in October last year, he used social media to try and attract local youth
across India with an intention to take them to Syria and Iraq.
“He intended to undergo training in Syria, and after returning wanted to indulge in anti-national activities in the country,”
police said.
Mohiuddin, who had gone to the US four years ago, came in contact with a British woman living in Dubai.
Identified as Nicky Joseph alias Nicky alias Nicole alias Ayesha, she converted to Islam and had a “fundamentalist leaning”,
police said.
“In 2014, after the establishment of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Salman and Nicky started taking interest in development
activities of the Islamic State. They created various Facebook groups under pseudo names and started attracting people who were
interested in IS.”
As the US did not extend his visa, he returned to India and continued his activities.
The counter-intelligence of Telangana was tracking the techie through his online activities.
He allegedly used social media to attract youth from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bihar and other states
towards the IS. Police are now trying to identify the youth who were in touch with him through Facebook.
The counter-intelligence alerted police when Mohiuddin was preparing to leave for Dubai.
Police said he planned to leave for Syria from Dubai via Turkey.
Police arrested Mohiuddin under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Information Technology Act. Various electronic
gadgets were also recovered from him.
Police sources said that as he spent four years in the US, the information gathered from him about his activities during his stay
abroad will be shared with the Interpol.
A resident of Bazarghat area of Hyderabad, Mohiuddin left for the US after graduation in engineering. He earned a master’s degree
in electronics from Texas Southern University and was doing odd jobs when he got indoctrinated in IS ideology on social media.
Mohiuddin’s family has termed the charges against him baseless. His father Ahmed Mohiuddin, a retired civil engineer, said he was
implicated in a false case.
Ahmed said his son was going to Dubai for a job.
Jagtar Singh is escorted by police personnel after being produced in a court in Patiala.
