- Wednesday, February 26, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
INTELLIGENCE agencies have received strong inputs over the involvement of a Khalistan-supported group backed by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in the planning and execution of the blast that rocked a court in Ludhiana in the northern Indian state of Punjab on Thursday (23).
A senior official said India’s intelligence agencies were working overtime in Punjab to keep a close watch on Khalistan sympathisers trying to revive their movement, Asian News International reported.
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The handlers based in Pakistan were giving instructions to their workers on the ground to execute terror activities in the poll-bound state, he said, adding that many of such attempts were foiled in a joint operation with the state police.
“We got specific inputs regarding locals gangs that have been hired and radicalised to revive the Khalistan movement that was backed by Pakistan’s ISI. We shared these inputs with local police and an operation conducted across the state to prepare a list of criminals out on bail or absconding. The recoveries made in the last few months were just tip of an iceberg,” a senior police officer said.
He added that the incident of grenade blast near the gate of a cantonment of the Indian Army in Pathankot in Punjab last month was also a terror act executed by local criminals.
“This year around 42 drone sightings of unmanned aerial vehicles near Punjab were reported and many more remained unreported. The explosives and small arms dropped using the drone from the Pakistan side will be used to destabilise peace in the state,” a senior officer was quoted as saying by ANI.
In the last five months, Punjab Police has recovered seven tiffin bombs and more than 10 hand grenades from bordering towns, the report added.
In August, Punjab Police arrested Gurmukh Singh, son of the nephew of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Sikh leader who stole the headlines during the peak of the Khalistani movement in the early 1980s, and recovered a huge amount of explosives from his possession.
In the investigation that followed, it was found that he was getting logistic support from Pakistan’s ISI and by other Pakistan-based pro-Khalistan terrorist groups to carry out multiple terror attacks in Punjab in its ongoing efforts to revive militancy before the elections due early next year.
