BANGKOK : Jagtar Singh Tara, convicted for abetting the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh two decades ago and arrested in Thailand this week, will be extradited
once legal formalities are completed, Indian government sources said here today.
The 2013 extradition treaty between New Delhi and Bangkok will facilitate the process, the sources told UNI. The Criminal Court of Thailand has ordered his extradition to India to stand trial.
Tara, 47, was detained in the beach resort city of Pattaya on January 5 where he had been living since October last year under the name of Gurmeet Singh and holding a Pakistani passport, according to Thai police.
Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, who was in Bangkok in late November 2014 to attend a UN conference, had made a request to Thai authorities to help arrest Tara. The terrorist, who had escaped from jail in India in 2004, made headlines in Thailand last November when Thai media reported the leak of an online local police alert for the fugitive. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had then stated that the Thai government would extradite Singh to India if he was arrested.
Singh was one of the masterminds in the assassination of Beant Singh by a suicide bomber outside the Punjab civil secretariat on August 31, 1995. Seventeen others were killed in the attack.
(AGENCIES)
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