Escaped Khalistani chief Harminder Singh Mintoo arrested

Chandigarh: Khalistani Liberation Force (KLF) Chief Harminder Singh Mintoo was on Monday nabbed from Delhi railway station, a day after he escaped with five other inmates from Nabha jail in Patiala.

"Mintoo has been arrested from Delhi railway station by Delhi police," said a senior official of Punjab police in Chandigarh.

He said Delhi police nabbed the dreaded terrorist on the basis of inputs passed on by Punjab police.

"We passed on the information about Mintoo following which Delhi police arrested him," official said.

He said a team of Punjab police will go to Delhi to bring him back.

Mintoo along with five others had fled high-security Nabha prison in Punjab early on Sunday. The other escapees are his aide Kashmir Singh Galwadi, and four other prisoners -- Harjinder Singh, Gurpreet Singh Sekhon, Kulpreet Singh and Amandeep Singh.

The Punjab government had on Sunday said that an SIT probe has been ordered into the jailbreak.

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal met NSA Ajit Doval and also visited Nabha jail. He accused Pakistan of complicity in the jailbreak, claiming that the neighbour was desperate to resume terror activities after India’s surgical strikes on terrorist camps across the Line of Control (LoC).

Meanwhile, it has come to light that Mintoo had fled jail earlier too, on March 29 this year.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, five armed men attacked the policemen accompanying him to a local civic hospital on that occasion. While a policeman was shot at, two others suffered eye injuries after the attackers threw chilli powder at them.

The men who carried out the Nabha jailbreak on Sunday were hoping to free only four of their gang members but Mintoo and Kashmir Singh, accused in the shooting of a Shiv Sena leader, decided to join the group after coming to know of the escape plan, said another report.

This information was provided to the investigators by arrested escapee Parvinder on Sunday.

Mintoo was arrested by Punjab Police after he was deported from Thailand in November 2014.

The KLF chief was brought to India along with his key aide Gurpeet Singh ‘Gopi’ after Punjab Police, in coordination with central agencies, traced them in Thailand, a senior police official said.

Mintoo was wanted in ten terror offences while Gopi was tasked to target Hindu outfit leaders in 2013, which were foiled by Punjab Police, in a bid to disturb the peace in the state.

The then Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini had then claimed that Pakistan’s spy agency ISI was “making concerted efforts” to use terror outfits like KLF and Babbar Khalsa to revive terrorism in Punjab, with focus on carrying out killings of prominent leaders belonging to a particular community.

To strengthen KLF, he had developed independent contacts with the foreign-based supporters and fund raisers of terrorism, the official said.

When he was in Pakistan, Mintoo worked with Babbar Khalsa International. But, but being ambitious and a good organiser, he developed independent contacts with Pakistan’s ISI and Europe and North America-based terrorist sympathisers and fund raisers and had planned to raise his own outfit, police had then said.

During his stay in Pakistan, he had visited Europe in 2010 to establish contacts and in June 2013, he left Pakistan for an extensive tour of Europe lasting 11 months, police had then said.