‘Baitha hai, sir, baitha hai!’(‘‘‘He is sitting there, Sir, he is there!’’’)( The Netting of Punjab CM’s assassin) continues....

This resulted in first the birth of the Babbar Khalsa, and later its international wing the BKI. In the wake of the Khalistani movement fighting for an independent state of Khalistan to be carved out of India, the BKI assumed a pre-eminent role in fighting the Indian establishment. The militant group was determined to avenge the deaths of innumerable Sikhs, perceived to have been killed in fake encounters by the police, with the tacit approval of Sardar Beant Singh, the then CM of Punjab.

As there was no time to lose, I drove straight to the residence of Arun Bhagat, Special Director, CBI, my immediate boss. The assassination case had been transferred to the C.B.I. from the Chandigarh Police on the day of the incident itself, and was being handled by another Branch of the organization, again under Bhagat. By a curious coincidence, soon after the case came to the Agency, Director Vijay Rama Rao, in a meeting held in his North Block office in Delhi, spoke to three officers including me. Even though none of us was formally connected with the investigation of the case, the Director felt we could possibly make some contribution in cracking it. He added that the C.B.I. faced a tremendous challenge with the case, unsolved till then, and it was the duty of every officer to contribute to its resolution. We were asked to keep our eyes and ears open, deploy sources and collect intelligence connected with the crime. Providence willed it that within days of this meeting I was to become the medium for an important contribution.

Bhagat, the Special Director, heard me out patiently at his Bhapa Nagar residence. At the end of man the conversation, most nonchalantly, he asked me to go ahead and nab the culprit. ‘‘‘Sir, but to carry out an operation to arrest a terrorist of a Sikh militant group, I would need adequate armed back-up. The man is armed and has a cyanide pill’’’, I remonstrated. ‘‘‘Oh! Never mind.

To be continued...