NEW DELHI, Jan 16: After being on the run for over 10 years, Babbar Khalsa militant Jagtar Singh Tara, convicted for life in the then Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh’s assassination, was today extradited from Thailand, heading back in the custody of Punjab Police.
37-year old Tara, who had tunelled his way out of high-security Burail prison in Chandigarh in 2004, remained absconding, travelling under various identities before being nabbed in Thailand on January 5 this year.
According to Thai authorities, Tara entered Thailand as Gurmeet Singh on Pakistan passport in October and was arrested in the eastern Province of Chon Buri living in the home of a Pakistani national who has also been taken into custody.
Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice on the request of CBI soon after he escaped with two other dreaded militants.
A Thai court had ordered his extradition on January 7.
The Thai authorities handed him over to the Punjab Police team led by Rajpura DSP Rajinder Singh Sohal which had reached Bangkok on January 13, a Punjab Police statement said in Chandigarh.
Another three-member team headed by DSP Counter Intelligence Tejinderjit Singh Virk reached Bangkok on January 15, it said.
A third Punjab Police team headed by Patiala SP (Detective) Jaskaran Singh Teja has been deputed to bring Tara from Delhi airport to Patiala.
According to CBI, Tara was directly involved in the assassination of Beant Singh as he had purchased the car which was used to kill the CM in the Chandigarh secretariat with a humam bomb exploding.
The conspiracy of all the accused was unearthed when a car painter Balwinder Singh identified the vehicle used in the blast by the terrorists as he had painted it.
Beant Singh was assassinated in a bomb blast at the secretariat complex in Chandigarh on August 31, 1995 by Babbar Khalsa International terrorists. The blast had claimed the lives of 17 others including three commandos.
Thirteen people were named as accused in the case, out of whom nine were arrested, three were at large and the suicide bomber, Dilawar Singh, died during the explosion.
Tara along with two other terrorists had fled from the Burail Jail by digging a 110-feet tunnel from his barrack in January 2004.
A team of Chon Buri Provincial police and soldiers had raided a house on Soi Mabyailia in Tambon Nong Phreu in Bang Lamung district and arrested Tara, one of six militants convicted for the 1995 blast.
The sources said the Indian Government had been in touch with Thai authorities to nab Tara following inputs that he was in that country probably under another identity. (PTI)
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