Police and paramilitary personnel stand guard on the barricaded street throughout a search operation to nab Waris Punjab De chief Amritpal Singh at Mehina Village in Hoshiarpur on March 29, 2023.
| Photo Credit: ANI
A case under the Arms Act was lodged in opposition to Varinder Singh, an in depth aide of fugitive separatist chief Amritpal Singh of ‘Waris Punjab De’, on Thursday within the Chenab Valley’s Kishtwar district.
The police mentioned a First Information Report (FIR) was filed in Kishtwar district, the place Mr. Varinder secured a gun license in 2013. Initial studies steered that Mr. Varinder, who served within the Army’s 19 Sikh Regiment in Jammu and Kashmir, “procured a gun licence through fake documents”.
Terminated from service in 2015, Mr. Varinder managed to resume gun licenses by means of officers from J&Ok’s 5 districts, which included Kishtwar, Kathua, Reasi, Baramulla and Poonch. Another one in all Mr. Singh’s aides, Talwinder Singh, had additionally procured a gun licence from Jammu and Kashmir.
Earlier this month, the J&Ok Police arrested a Jammu couple for alleged hyperlinks with Mr. Singh and was handed over to the Punjab police. It additionally surfaced that the arms licences of two bodyguards accompanying Mr. Singh have been traced to J&Ok’s two districts and have been cancelled. Those bodyguards, seen accompanying the pro-Khalistan Sikh chief in a number of movies, have been recognized as Mr. Talwinder and Mr. Varender. Mr. Varinder, arrested under National Security Act (NSA), has already been shifted to an Assam jail.
Around three lakh gun licenses have been issued by the deputy commissioners in J&Ok previous to the erstwhile State changing into a Union Territory (UT) in 2019, principally between 2012 and 2018. The gun licence rip-off the place over 2.78 lakh unlawful licences have been issued in J&Ok is being investigated by the CBI “to establish any connivance between district magistrates and arms dealers”. The cowl of the gun racket was blown by the Anti-Terrorism Squad of Rajasthan in 2017, following arrests of criminals with gun licences from J&Ok on faux paperwork.
