Punjab Police, along with Delhi Police, apprehended four persons on the outskirts of Delhi, including an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader on suspicion of planning a terror attack in Delhi and Punjab. Deepak Sharma of Preet Nagar in Moga (Punjab), Sandeep Singh of Kotkaror Kalan village in Ferozepur (Punjab), Sunny Dagar of Ishapur village in Najafgarh in Delhi, and Vipin Jakhar, a resident of Goyla Khurd in New Delhi, were apprehended by the police.
Vipin Jakhar is an Aam Aadmi Party leader who ran in the 2017 Municipal Council elections. Jakhar ran elections on his own, but he was intimately affiliated with the Aam Aadmi Party, as amply demonstrated by a Facebook page he maintained.
Jakhar fought independently for the post of Ward member from the Chhawla ward in Goyla Khurd Village in South Delhi. His election affidavit can be found here. The current association of Vipin Jakhar with the Aam Aadmi Party is not clear as of now.
The accused were affiliated with Canada-based mafioso Arshdeep Singh alias Arsh Dala and Australia-based gangster Gurjant Singh alias Janta, according to Punjab director general of police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav. Lethal weapons often used by the Pakistani army have been recovered from the accused. The police recovered three P-86 hand grenades, one IED, two 9mm handguns, and 40 live cartridges from the detained individuals.
All four detainees have been held on five-day remand by the state police. During interrogation, they revealed that Arsh Dala had entrusted them with carrying out criminal activities in Delhi and Punjab ahead of Independence Day in order to undermine peace and harmony.
So far, investigations have shown that Deepak Sharma was sought by the Punjab Police in two cases: the March 2022 murder of Moga-based Jaswinder Singh and June 2022 shooting at the home of a panchayat secretary in Dala village, Moga. Sandeep, who had lately returned to India from Dubai, had assisted Deepak in carrying out the shooting at the panchayat secretary’s residence.
Sunny Dagar, who’d been released on parole, is an active member of the Delhi-NCR gangs Neeraj Bawana and Tillu Tajpuriya. Dagar was arranging dungeons in Delhi for Deepak and Sandeep Singh, while Vipin Jakhar was giving financial and logistical assistance as well as enabling the accused’s travel from one shelter to the next.