Chandigarh: Khalistan Liberation Force chief Harminder Singh ‘Mintoo’ who along with five others escaped from the high security jail in Nabha, 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.
In South East Asia, the KLF chief had travelled to Laos, Cambodia, Burma, besides Thailand where he had established a base, police had said.
The counter-intelligence wing of Punjab police had been tracking them and shared intelligence inputs with the Central agencies. It was found that Mintoo was using a fake Malaysian passport issued in the name of one Gurdeep Singh.
A two-member team of counter intelligence wing of Punjab police had camped in Thailand for three weeks.
Harminder had been influenced by the radical ideology and had developed contacts with Pakistan based terrorist leaders particularly Wadhawa Singh, the chief of Babbar Khalsa International-another militant outfit, police had then said.