COURTESY HT FEB 5
NIA raids Bhagwanpuria aide’s houses, seizes ammo
Teams recover Rs 20 lakh drug money, 130 rounds, bags used for packing heroin from his residences in Amritsar, Gurdaspur
The NIA team during a raid at a house on Lahorka Road in Amritsar on Thursday. HT PHOTO
Anil Sharma
anil.kumar@htlive.com
AMRITSAR : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday conducted raids at the residences of Hizbul Mujahideen terror funding module suspect Manpreet Singh, an aide of gangster Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, in Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts. The agency teams seized Rs 20 lakh drug money, 130 rounds of .9 mm pistol, a pen drive, a Hyundai Verna car, a scooter, property documents, polythene bags used for packing heroin and mobile phones, etc.
The search at the Lahorka Road locality house in Amritsar city that was rented by Manpreet three months back continued for nearly 10 hours after breaking open the door with the help of the police, it was learnt. Manpreet is absconding.
The alleged terror module was busted by the Amritsar police in April last year with the arrest of Hilal Ahmed Wagay of Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district and Rs 29 lakh was recovered from a truck he was driving. Wagay, the police claimed, had come to collect the money on the instructions of Hizbul Mujahideen chief Riyaz Ahmed Naikoo who was killed in an encounter in Pulwama two weeks later.
The police subsequently arrested Bikramjit Singh, alias Vicky and his brother Maninder Singh, alias Mani of Guru Amardas Avenue in Amritsar in connection with the case. Bikramjit delivered the money to Wagay, who was to further hand it over to the Hizbul Mujahideen group, it was claimed.
Bikramjit had allegedly confessed that the money was given to him by Ranjit Singh, alias Cheeta who along with his father Harbhajan Singh and brother Gagandeep Singh was arrested from Haryana in an NIA-Punjab Police operation in May last year. Cheeta is alleged kingpin in the seizure of 532kg heroin smuggled in a rock salt consignment imported from Pakistan though the Attari border in June 2019. The NIA took over the case and a fresh case was registered on May 8, 2020, in Delhi. The agency has already filed chargesheets against 11 accused in a special NIA court in Mohali.
Manpreet, an alleged hawala operator, collected heroin, drug proceeds and weapons and transported them at the instance of Ranjit Singh and one Iqbal Singh Shera, a nephew of drug smuggler Balwinder Singh Havelian.