Punjab Police foil possible terrorist attack, one held
Darpan News Desk IANS, 24 Nov, 2021 12:02 PM
Chandigarh, Nov 24 (IANS) With the arrest of a highly-radicalised operative identified as Ranjit Singh of Tarn Taran, linked with foreign-based terrorist entities, Punjab Police on Wednesday claimed it foiled another possible terrorist attack.
The police have recovered two Chinese made P-86 hand grenades and two pistols along with cartridges, besides a black Royal Enfield motorcycle from his possession, said Director General of Police Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota here.
He said acting on intelligence inputs about the presence of Ranjit Singh in the area of Amritsar, special teams were sent to the specified area to spot the suspect and Ranjit Singh was apprehended.
This development comes at a moment when Punjab has been witnessing huge inflow of hand grenades and tiffin bombs along with other weapons.
Recently, the state has also seen a couple of grenade blasts, including the cantonment area in Pathankot, besides the recovery of an unexploded hand-grenade from Zira area.
The DGP said during investigation, Ranjit Singh revealed that he had formed a group named "Kaum De Rakhe" to collect funds on the pretext of social work and through this group, he got in touch with various radical and terrorist elements based in the UK and other countries through social media.
He said recently Ranjit Singh had received a consignment of arms and explosives, and was planning to carry out a terror strike to create an atmosphere of fear and lawlessness in the border state.
The DGP said Ranjit Singh was part of a group, which had vandalised statues of folk dancers installed at the heritage street leading to the Golden Temple in Amritsar on January 15, 2020.
Arrested in the statue vandalism case, he was presently on bail, he added.
Punjab annually generates 20 million tonnes of paddy straw and this is normally set on fire to quickly clear the fields for the next crop, resulting in choking of the National Capital Region (NCR) in October and November.
Priyanka's remarks came after farmers on Tuesday evening vacated the railway tracks and highways in Punjab after the Amarinder Singh government accepted the demands of the sugarcane farmers.
The 'rebel' legislators reached Dehradun in the morning to apprise Rawat about the mood of the public against the Amarinder Singh-led government in the state. They, among 20-odd party legislators, have been demanding replacement of Amarinder Singh as he failed to fulfill the 2017 poll promises.
Rao also slammed Chief Minister Pramod Sawant for raking up 10-year-old allegations related to the mining scam in an attempt to put Congress leaders in the dock in pollbound Goa.
According to the customs department, one male passenger aged 27 years, flew in from Dubai by Emirates flight EK-544 was intercepted at exit gate and his baggage which were found to be unusually heavy were subjected for detailed examination.
According to the sources, the panel members were reported about the delay and red tapism in the bureaucracy which has been hampering the pace of development in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh and many new schemes announced by the Union government were getting affected.
