‘Baitha hai, sir, baitha hai!’(‘‘‘He is sitting there, Sir, he is there!’’’)( The Netting of Punjab CM’s assassin) continues....

That left me with no option but to get going. After all, the case was of utmost significance, both from national and international perspective, with a direct bearing on the internal security of the country. The Chief Minister of Punjab, during his tenure, had taken a hard-line on Sikh terrorists in his state. He had given a free hand to his Police Chief KPS Gill and supported him to the hilt in his relentless campaign against terrorism. The common perception was that during the CM’s tenure, widespread human rights violations were committed and many innocent civilians killed in cold blood in the name of fighting terror. Radical elements in the Sikh community had for long been baying for the blood of both the Chief Minister and the Director General of Police.

At 5.10 pm on Aug 31, 1995 the CM came down from his second floor office at the Punjab and Haryana Secretariat in Chandigarh. He was about to board his official car parked in the VIP porch , when a suicide bomber dressed in police uniform, later identified as Dilawar Singh, managed to sneak close to the car and blew himself up. The CM, and 17 others were killed instantaneously. Those grievously injured in the suicide bomb attack numbered 15.

As subsequent investigations revealed, the assassination was the culmination of a sinister conspiracy hatched by the masterminds of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) based in Pakistan, Germany, UK and the USA. Founded in 1978, the BKI has the name Babbar Khalsa taken from the Babbar Akali movement of 1920 against British colonial rule. The modern-day Babbar Khalsa was created as a result of the bloody clash on April 13, 1978 between mainstream followers of Sikhism and the reformist Nirankari sect. The killing of 13 Sikhs in the armed clash and failure of the legal system to bring the guilty to book gave rise to militancy among the fundamentalist elements in the Sikh community.

To be continued.....