The Hindu : New Delhi News : Hawara was planning to shift base to Pakistan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 24, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Hawara was planning to shift base to Pakistan

Devesh K. Pandey

Was poised to take over as new Babbar Khalsa Chief

NEW DELHI: Had he not been arrested by the Crime Branch of the Delhi police, Jagtar Singh Hawara, the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) chief for operations in India, would have shifted base to Pakistan within two months as he was slated to take over from Wadhawa Singh as the new BKI chief in the near future.

During his interrogation by the Delhi police, Hawara purportedly disclosed that Wadhawa Singh, who is operating from Pakistan for the past over two decades, was no more in a condition to carry out the responsibility of espousing the "Khalistan" cause. He said that in the past few years Wadhawa Singh had turned very frail and had also undergone surgery at least four times for different complications.

After Hawara and two of his accomplices made a dramatic escape from Burail Jail in Chandigarh in January 2004, he was asked to remain underground to evade detection. Hawara and his two accomplices remained together for about a fortnight after which he went to an old BKI activist seeking refuge at Samrala in Punjab. The 62-year-old BKI activist was so impressed with Hawara that he allowed him to stay with his daughter, Hardeep Kaur.

Soon after the escape, Hawara revived his contact with senior BKI leaders like Wadhawa Singh's son-in-law, Surender Singh, and Resham Singh, who operate from Germany. He was also in touch with Wadhawa Singh. Initially, he tried to communicate with the BKI bosses through the Internet, but being illiterate about computers he could not send his messages across properly and had to finally rely on telephone.

During interrogation, Hawara claimed that Hardeep, with whom he had been staying for the past one year, was like his sister and had even offered to become a human bomb on his direction. She helped him hide the consignments of explosives and ammunition he received from carriers. These carriers were basically smugglers who operated on the Indo-Pak border and brought the explosive consignments from Pakistan mostly via Jammu. At Hawara's instance, Hardeep asked her three sisters to keep part of the consignments, comprising pistols, ABCD timers, pencil timers, over 5,000 live cartridges, with them.

All this while, Hawara kept receiving money from his Germany counterparts through the hawala channel. While the police are yet to come across evidence revealing that monitory transactions were made through any bank, he had received a sum of Rs. 50 lakhs after his escape from Burail Jail.

By this time, Hawara's track record had impressed his bosses in the BKI, who were in search of a successor to Wadhawa Singh in Pakistan. Hawara joined "Khalistan" movement at the tender age of 14. During interrogation, he allegedly disclosed that his first prey was a Sikh priest. He eliminated the priest as he had illicit relations with many women. Gradually, Hawara started working with the BKI activists and rose to a position where he was included in the conspiracy to eliminate the former Punjab Chief Minister, Beant Singh, in 1995.

The next year, he was arrested along with about eight BKI militants but by then he had proved his worth in the outfit and was made the chief for operations in India. After he escaped from jail, he disclosed that he triggered a blast at Ropar in Punjab this January in a bid to kill Baba Piara Singh Bhaniarawala.

It is learnt that Hawara had also come to the Capital to conduct a reconnaissance of the Congress leader, Jagdish Tytler. As per his disclosure, others in the target list of the BKI included General Ranjit Singh Dayal, who was part of Operation Blue Star.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi