"Gifts From The Gulf" continues....


In yet another collaborative effort between the BSF and our CBI team, a truck headed for Punjab was intercepted on July 14, 2000 at Libaspur, North-West Delhi.

A steel trunk and a Rexene bag were recovered with two AK-56 rifles, 20 pistols, large quantities of ammunition, detonators, timers, cordex fuse, match fuse etc. all meant for Babbar Khalsa, a deadly terrorist outfit in Punjab. Two couriers, Gurbachan Singh of Ajnala and Baldev Singh of Gurdaspur, were arrested from the truck.


However, we did not, in the least, expect that a similar operation involving a controlled delivery at Santalpur would eventually link us up with a ruthless, transnational underworld network that had systematically spread fear among India’s business community through a series of kidnappings for heavy ransom.

Indeed, some of the members of this gang were the newly appointed ‘bhais’ (dons) of Dubai, originally from India but working closely with the ISI and militant outfits in India’s western neighborhood. In the months to come, we had hardly anticipated that as a fall-out of our operation, a rising star on the firmament of terror and organized crime in India would be stopped in his tracks.



At about 0130 hours on the night of October 26 & 27, 2001, the CBI team headed by M.C. Sahni, spotted a truck bearing registration number RJ-02-G-0560 parked opposite Hotel Nagraj in Santalpur on National Highway-15 (NH 15). It was the vehicle the CBI boys had been looking for since they arrived in the area a fortnight earlier on the tip-off of a BSF informer. The eightmember team fanned out in the cover of darkness and approached the vehicle stealthily.

However, they could not escape the alert eyes of the truck’s occupants who had spotted suspicious looking men surround them. The miscreants opened fire at the CBI team. Inspector V.K. Shukla returned the fire. The smugglers immediately drove the truck away on NH-15 towards Radhanpur, the next township on the highway. The CBI team hopped onto two jeeps, requisitioned locally from government departments, and followed the truck.

To be continued...