UP ATS gets 7-day remand of Khalistani suspects

Lucknow, Jan 26:  The Uttar Pradesh Police Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has got seven days’ police custody remand (PCR) of three Khalistani suspects, arrested on January 18, while doing a recce of sensitive sites in Ayodhya before the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony of Ram Lalla.

A senior ATS official said the custody remand of the suspects will start from 12 noon on January 26 and continue till 6 p.m. on February 1 during which they will be questioned about their intentions behind doing the recce in Ayodhya and their other links with Khalistani terrorists based in Canada.

The ATS official said the special judge of NIA/ATS court in Lucknow, Vivekanand Sharan Tripathi, granted the custody remand of all three suspects identified as Rajasthan residents Shankar Dussad a.k.a. Shankar Jajod, Ajit Kumar Sharma and Pradeep Puniya. He said Shankar Dussad and Pradeep Puniya were residents of Sikar district while Ajit Kumar Sharma was a resident of Jhunjhunu district.

As per the ATS official, the three suspects had been under radar since January 17 night and were arrested after their Khalistani links were confirmed when a recorded voice message by Khalistani leaders was circulated on some people’s mobile phones in Lucknow.

The recorded voice message was in a male voice. In the message, a man posing as Canada-based Khalistan terrorist Gurupatwant Singh Pannu, addressing Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, said that Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) (a US-based group that supports the secession of Punjab from India as Khalistan) was going to hold him (Yogi) accountable on January 22 and Ram temple pran pratishtha was not going to save him.

This alerted the security agencies. The UP ATS officials said after complaints from several people of having received such recorded voice calls from different foreign numbers, electronic and cyber experts of the ATS had been put on the job to trace the person or group behind it.