Ten armed men broke into Punjab¡¯s Nabha jail in the wee hours on Sunday morning, taking along Khalistan Liberation Force chief Harminder Singh Mintoo and four others - gangsters Vicky Gondar, Neeta Johal, Gurpreet Singh, Vikramjeet Singh.
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Senior police officials have rushed to the spot and a probe is underway. A high alert has been sounded at the border. Pickets have been put up on a 50 km radius.
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Harminder Singh (49) is wanted in 10 terror-related cases, including the 2008 attack on Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and 2010 recovery of explosives at Halwara Air Force station.
He reportedly took charge of the KLF in 2009 after he left Wadhawa Singh-led Babbar Khalsa International (BKI). He is wanted for plotting killings of three Punjab Shiv Sena leaders. He also allegedly planted Improvised Explosive Devices at Halwara Air Force station near Ludhiana in 2010.
The police said Singh, who has allegedly lived in Pakistan, was asked by the ISI to launch an attack on Independence Day in 2010 but the plan did not work.
Apart from Thailand, he also allegedly travelled to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar to set up a base.
The KLF was founded after the Operation Blue Star in 1984 when the Indian Army entered Golden Temple ¨C the holiest Sikh shrine in Amritsar ¨C to flush out militants. The incident had triggered widespread anger.
Till 1993, the KLF was considered to be the most dreaded organisation fighting for a separate homeland of Khalistan. It was neutralised after several of its activists were killed in an operation led by the then Punjab Police chief KPS Gill.
Harminder was finally arrested in 2014 and his arrest was hailed as a huge success for anti-terror operations in Punjab. Singh and his aide Gurpreet Singh alias Gopi were arrested in November 2014 at the New Delhi airport after the two were nabbed in Thailand.
His aide Gopi was tasked with executing targeted killings of Hindu leaders in 2013, which the Punjab Police foiled.