New Delhi: Each time Dharamjit Singh came out on parole to meet his family in Amritsar, his wife Pallavi knew that the few days outside jail offered little respite. The threat to his life from gangster Jaggu Bhagwanpuria and his right-hand man, Amritpal Singh, remained.
While serving a life term for murder in Amritsar Central Jail, Dharamjit had gotten into a fight with Bhagwanpuria, putting a target on his back. Bhagwanpuria and Amritpal would often tell him they would eventually get him killed.
That threat materialised in September 2025 when Dharamjit returned home around midnight, nearly two weeks after being released on parole. As he waited for his wife to open the door, Pallavi saw three motorcycle-borne men fire at him. Dharamjit later succumbed to his injuries at a private hospital in Amritsar.
The Amritsar Police arrested the shooters but found that the conspiracy had been hatched by Australia-based Ankush alias Bahman and Amritpal, who also goes by Amritpal Dalam.
After remaining on the run for several years, Dalam was extradited from Moldova by the Punjab Police and brought to India Saturday, the force’s first such operation from a European country. The Punjab Police took him into custody at Chisinau Airport the previous day after securing his extradition. A team from the Punjab Police’s Anti-Gangster Task Force (AGTF), led by SP Bikramjit Singh Brar, had gone to Moldova to bring him back to Punjab.
Punjab DGP Gaurav Yadav said Amritpal was detained by Moldovan authorities in February this year while attempting to cross the Otaci state border into Ukraine. The Punjab Police subsequently initiated extradition proceedings through its specialised wing.
“During these proceedings, the ‘Court of Chisinau’ granted the extradition of Amritpal Singh to India on 26 May, 2026. His appeal against the extradition order was also rejected by the ‘Court of Appeal Centru’ on 16 July, 2026, thereby making the extradition order final,” DGP Yadav said in a statement.
He said Amritpal’s extradition marked the culmination of a six-month-long intelligence-led international manhunt, codenamed ‘Operation Eastern Reach’, involving sustained surveillance, strategic intelligence gathering and close coordination with national and international agencies.
Accused in Akali Dal leader’s brutal murder
According to police records, Amritpal studied till Class 12 and hails from Dalam Nagal village in Punjab’s Batala. He has long been associated with Bhagwanpuria and has been running the gangster’s syndicate while the latter has been lodged in an Assam jail.
He has 21 cases registered against him, all in Punjab, involving charges of murder, extortion, arms trafficking and assault on police officials. Four have reached the trial stage, while investigations are underway in the remaining 17.
Punjab AGTF chief Pramod Ban said Amritpal’s criminal history began in November 2019 and that over the past six years, his name had cropped up in several high-profile killings, including those carried out to avenge attacks on Bhagwanpuria’s associates.
According to police records, Amritpal was first arrested in November 2019 after his role emerged in the killing of local Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Dalbir Singh, a former sarpanch of Dhilwan village in Gurdaspur. The brutal killing, in which Dalbir was shot and his legs chopped off, sparked widespread outrage in Punjab.
Amritpal was arrested days after the murder by Punjab Police in Maharashtra’s Nanded. The probe revealed that he had attacked Dalbir with a sharp weapon while the main accused fired at him, causing fatal injuries.
In July 2023, the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted Amritpal bail, observing that the injuries caused by his attack were only on non-vital parts and that his record was clean (at the time) except for that case.
Amritpal later adopted a fake identity, secured a passport in the name of Gurpal Singh from Haryana’s Kurukshetra and fled abroad in October 2024. Meanwhile, a court in Gurdaspur convicted all the accused, including Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, who had supplied a weapon in the murder case. Amritpal was declared a proclaimed offender.
Amritpal has been implicated in at least 17 cases since fleeing the country, including Dharma’s murder in Amritsar. AGTF chief Ban said his name had also surfaced during probes into several murder cases across the state, including the 2024 double murders of Amrjeet Lal and Kashmiri Lal in Hoshiarpur and the 2025 killings of Kanav Mahajan and Sarabjit Singh, as well as the murder of another Batala resident, Jasdeep Singh, in 2025.
According to police records, his name has also surfaced in the probe into the recovery of five hand grenades and an electronic detonator concealed in a pouch outside Sadar police station in Batala. However, he has not been charged in the case as yet.
(Edited by Chingkheinganbi Mayengbam)
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