Harike (Tarn Taran): It was a usual Thursday evening in Zira town of Punjab’s Ferozepur district. Rajkumar Singh, a shopkeeper, was attending to a rush of 9 pm customers, when two men on a bike appeared and allegedly shot at him.
He managed to dodge the bullets, but neighbours told ThePrint that he hasn’t opened his shop since.
In his FIR filed at Zira police station, which was read out to ThePrint by an officer there, Rajkumar has alleged that the shootout happened following extortion calls to him for Rs 15 lakh by Lakhbir Singh ‘Landa’, a dreaded ‘gangster’ and suspected operative of the Sikh militant organisation, Babbar Khalsa International. Lakhbir features on the National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) list of key people identified in the “gangster-terror” network.
The NIA has also announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh for anyone able to give information about the whereabouts of Lakhbir Singh, who is currently said to be in Canada.
His list of alleged criminal activities is long. He has over 30 cases registered against him in various districts of Punjab, all between 2011 to 2023, shows data obtained from Harike police station.
An original resident of Harike, a town in the border district of Punjab’s Tarn Taran city, Lakbir’s name continues to elicit fear in the minds of the townspeople.
“I will be spotted, identified and possibly harmed if I tell you where his family home is,” a Harike resident said when ThePrint reached the small town, known for its wetlands, Saturday.
Till today, people claim they get calls in his name, demanding money. His gang is still functional here, with Lakhbir pulling the strings from Canada, claimed police sources.
“A lot of people receive threatening phone calls, and allege that the call came from Lakhbir Singh. However, local criminal elements sometimes tend to extort money in the name of dreaded gangsters,” a senior officer said.
ThePrint reached station house officer (SHO) of Harike police, Kewal Singh, for comment on Lakhbir, but received no response.
Meanwhile, his aged parents, who continue to live in Harike, say they have become immune to police visits and questions.
The last week’s news around Sikh extremists operating from abroad — following Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegation of India’s involvement in extremist Hardeep Nijjar’s killing in June and the resulting diplomatic row between the two countries — have however, made the old couple more-than-usual-uneasy about their son’s wellbeing.
They also fear for their land, following the NIA seizure of properties belonging to Nijjar and another Sikh extremist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Saturday.
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At Lakhbir Singh’s home
Now aged 85, Naranjan Singh is a former Army serviceman the right half of whose body is paralysed — a testament to his service in India’s wars against Pakistan. His son’s alleged involvement in extremist activities, however, has forced him to reiterate his patriotism.
On the shelves of the walls of his home are old photographs of Singh in the Army, wedding photographs of his children, as well as those from their childhood.
The only child missing from the wall of memories is Lakhbir Singh. “We’d only be sad having his photo there,” Naranjan told ThePrint.
He lives with his wife, 75-year-old Parminder Kaur, in isolation today. Their only outing is to hospitals in Amritsar for treatment.
Since their son came to be identified as a ‘dreaded gangster’, the two claim they have become used to police raids in their house and hour-long questioning by the local authorities who, they say, after years of meetings have become a bit empathetic towards them.
They don’t use phones and their relatives don’t come to visit them. “Just the mere mention of his name (Lakhbir Singh) makes my heart beat faster, makes me feel unwell,” Parminder Kaur said.
The couple hasn’t led an easy life, they say. They told ThePrint that their son got involved in heroin smuggling at the young age of 16 and things haven’t been the same since.
In 2016, they added, he fled to Canada and they haven’t seen or been in touch with him since then. But they maintain that Lakhbir Singh was “a pure soul who was led down the path of crime by bad company and powerful local leaders”.
“They made an innocent boy a gangster,” alleged his mother.
The couple didn’t lose only one son to crime, they lost their entire family, they rue.
“Our children [they are parents to four], especially our elder son, fear they will get into trouble if they come to visit us. We only are able to talk to them for a minute or two twice or thrice a year,” Parminder explained.
While Lakhbir’s parents claimed that all their children lived abroad, local residents and media reports give varying accounts of their whereabouts.
With the killing of extremists Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Sukhdool Singh alias Sukha Duneke in Canada this year, the parents now fear for Lakhbir’s life. “Anything can happen, but we’ll never know. He is not in touch with us,” his father said.
They also fear confiscation of their farmland by the government after properties in India belonging to US-and-Canada-based Sikh extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is on the NIA’s radar, were seized by the agency Saturday.
Facing over 16 criminal cases in Punjab, including three of sedition, some registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Arms Act, Pannun is known to be operating from Canada and the USA. He is currently in the USA and the face of the now-banned now-banned Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) outfit and its legal adviser, sources in the security establishment have told ThePrint.
The NIA’s Mohali court Saturday also ordered the confiscation of property belonging to Nijjar, in Jalandhar.
“We survive on our land and sardar ji‘s pension. We’ll have nowhere to go if it’s taken from us,” Parminder said.
‘We’re all very scared’
Lakhbir faces police charges for various alleged criminal acts, dating back since 2011. These include charges under the Arms Act of 1959 and Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropics Act, 1985.
He has been arrested four times and spent six months in jail between June and December 2015, according to records available at Harike police station.
The ‘gangster’ fled to Canada soon after he was released on bail, his parents told ThePrint.
In the nine cases registered against him between January 2011 and June 2015, he has been acquitted in three, while a cancellation report was filed in one, said the police.
Since 2016, 18 more FIRs have been registered against him. He faces charges of murder, attempted murder and drug smuggling in Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Moga and Ferozepur districts. He has been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Explosives Act, Arms Act, as well as the NDPS Act, according to police records.
In 2022, he was named as the key conspirator in the rocket-propelled grenade attack at the Punjab Police intelligence headquarters in Mohali, for which SFJ’s Pannun had purportedly claimed responsibility in a video.
At least four people in the past few years, police officials said, have received extortion calls allegedly from Lakhbir Singh, and his terror reigns supreme in the villages of Punjab, where the fearless and fiercely-helpful sardars admit to being scared and decline to extend help.
Even Rajkumar refused to talk to ThePrint about the attack on him. “I am a heart patient and this incident has worsened my condition. Please, I can’t discuss what happened,” he said, closing the doors of his house.
The shopkeeper right next to him, who was at the spot when the shooting happened, said he didn’t see anything or hear anything because he was busy with work. The same was echoed by all other witnesses to the incident.
“I can only say one thing,” a grocery shopkeeper said. “Earlier, extortion was limited to the main market, but now it has reached the villages. We’re all very scared.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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