Ludhiana bomb blast: 7 mobiles recovered from jail, a few of them used by accused, says police

The investigating agencies probing the Ludhiana court complex blast incident recovered seven mobile phones, a few of them used by the accused, from the city’s central jail, police sources said on Wednesday.

The phones have been sent to the forensic lab for further examination, they said.

Dismissed Punjab police cop Gagandeep Singh was killed in the blast on December 23. Six others were injured in the incident.

According to police, Gagandeep had gone to the washroom in the court complex to assemble the bomb to plant it somewhere. Gagandeep, who was dismissed from service in 2019, had spent two years in the Ludhiana jail in a drug-related case. Gagandeep along with two others — Ranjit Singh and Sukhwinder Singh — who were also lodged in the same jail allegedly used these phones, the sources said.

Ranjit and Sukhwinder had been brought on production warrants for questioning, they said.

It has been found during investigation that some international calls had also been made from these mobile phones. Two of these phones were largely used by Gagandeep during his stay in the jail, said police sources. Gagandeep had came out on bail in September.

According to CCTV footage procured from cameras installed at Ludhiana bus stand and roadside, Gagandeep had used a bus to reach Ludhiana from Khanna on December 23.

The investigating agencies have also questioned Gagandeep’s wife. They also questioned his girlfriend, serving in the police. Gagandeep had stayed with her in a hotel before proceeding to Ludhiana.

The police are also questioning Gagandeep’s friends in the police department whom he used to frequently meet after his dismissal from the service. Notably, German authorities detained a person allegedly belonging to the Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), an organization suspected to be behind the bomb blast in Ludhiana, based on intelligence inputs from India, officials had said on Tuesday.

The man, identified as Jaswinder Singh Multani, was detained in a city in Germany after intelligence inputs were shared with the authorities in Berlin highlighting his alleged role in planning terror attacks in India, they said.

Multani, against whom two FIRs have been registered in Punjab, was picked up and kept under detention and was questioned on the inputs provided by Indian agencies to the authorities in Berlin through diplomatic channels.

The central agencies and the Punjab police are investigating the Ludhiana blast incident jointly.