GUN, POWDER!

Punjab’s youth are being used as foot soldiers by an expanding nexus of gangsters, terrorists and drug dealers

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

Gurjant Singh sat with his hands folded, shifting uncomfortably on his seat as he glanced first at the burly policemen and then at his mother, anxious to catch her expression. Charanjit, her face half-hidden by her dupatta, had been staring him down. As she spoke to the 17-year-old, her voice got louder and shriller. Gurjant, six-foot tall, trembled.

Then, turning to the cops who were blaming mothers for not noticing their sons’ errant ways, she screamed: “I can tell you I was strict with him. He fell into bad company without understanding the dangers involved.”

It all started when Gurjant became friends with Gurpreet Singh alias Gopi Numberdar, 18, of Naushehra Pannuan village in Punjab’s Tarn Taran district. The duo would hang out together on bikes. One such ride on a dusty afternoon took an ugly turn when a drone from Pakistan dropped an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade), the kind that mujahideen in Afghanistan used. Their friends picked it up, though they did not know what was inside the package. Gopi knew. He, said the police, was using teenagers to execute a plan to fire the RPG at the Sarhali police station in Tarn Taran on December 9, 2022. He said he did this for Canada-based gangster-turned-terrorist Lakhbir Singh Sandhu, better known as Landa.

Gopi is now in jail, but Landa is wanted. The National Investigation Agency has offered a reward for information on his whereabouts. He is also wanted in the RPG attack on the police intelligence headquarters in Mohali on May 9, 2022.