Beant killer Tara nabbed in Thailand

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 6

Jagtar Singh Tara, one of the assassins of Punjab’s former Chief Minister Beant Singh, has been nabbed in Thailand, 11 years after he along with four others escaped from a Chandigarh prison in January 2004. Tara, who was using the alias Gurmeet Singh, was arrested by the Thailand police following intelligence inputs provided by Indian agencies and Punjab Police.
In December, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju, during an official visit to Thailand, had requested Thai Interior Minister Gen Anupong Paochinda to help India arrest Tara.
The counter-intelligence cell of the Punjab Police had been working in south-east Asian countries, especially Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar which have contiguous borders.
Sources in the intelligence establishment confirmed Tara’s arrest. He was using the passport of another country and a fake name to mask his identity. Tara was arrested in Thailand’s eastern province of Chon Buri yesterday after a raid on a house owned by a Pakistan national. Tara, a 37-year-old former member of the Babbar Khalsa International, had entered the country in October.
“We had been following him for a while, but at one point he slipped off the radar,” said a Thai police officer. Three months ago, Tara had escaped the Thai police dragnet when his accomplices Harminder Singh, alias Mintoo, and Ramandeep Singh Goldy were arrested in separate police operations in Thailand.
Mintoo was using a Malaysian passport under the name of Gurdeep Singh and was handed over to the Punjab Police in November 2014. The same month, a team of the Punjab Police nabbed Khalistan Tiger Force member Ramandeep Singh Goldy for his alleged role in Patiala and Ambala bomb blasts in 2010 and the killing of Rashtriya Sikh Sangat chief Rulda Singh in 2009. Just months earlier, Rattandeep Singh, an associate of Khalistani militants Paramjit Singh Panjwar and Wadhawa Singh, was arrested from Gorakhpur in UP by the Punjab Police.
Beant Singh was assassinated on August 31, 1995 when his security guard Dilawar Singh blew himself up as the CM exited his office at the Punjab and Haryana Civil Secretariat. Eighteen persons, including the CM’s doctor, had died.
Tara along with Jagtar Singh Hawara, Paramjit Singh Bheora and Balwant Singh Rajoana were convicted of assassinating Beant Singh. On January 22, 2004, Tara, Hawara, Bheora and another murder convict Devi Singh broke out of the Burail Jail in Chandigarh by digging a 94-foot-long tunnel.
(With agency inputs)