Ludhiana blast: A rogue cop’s link with the drug mafia crops up

New Delhi, Dec 25: A dismissed cop is suspected to be bomber at the Ludhiana district court complex.

An explosion at the court complex on Thursday killed one and injured four.

The suspect was identified as a Gagandeep Singh alias Gaggi. He was dismissed from service in 2019 for his alleged involvement in drug peddling. He was posted as the head constable at a police station in Khanna at the time of him being dismissed. The drug peddling case was investigated by the Ludhiana unit of the Special Task Force.

The former cop had spent 25 months in jail before getting bail on September 8. The hearing in the case was scheduled to be held on Friday, but the matter was adjourned to February 2022.

The police are not relying on a damaged mobile found on the suspect. It has been sent to the forensic sciences laboratory for further inspection. The body of the suspect was ripped apart in the blast and the postmortem report was handed over to the investigation agency.

On August 11 2019, the STF had arrested Amandeep and Vikas Kumar in Chandigarh. The STF seized 400 grams of heroin from them and during the interrogation, they revealed that the same was handed over to them by Gaggi. The STF then arrested Gaggi and seized 385 grams of heroin from him. Gaggi who joined the police force as constable in 2011 was later on promoted to the post of head constable in 2015.

Punjab Chief Minister, Charanjit Channi had on Friday said that they suspected the role of the drug mafia in the incident. He said that law will take its own course. An official tells OneIndia that it is not clear if Gaggi was acting on his own or at the behest of the drug mafia. Currently it appears as though he was acting on his own and there was hearing on his case scheduled for Friday.

The Ludhiana police had said after the blast on Thursday that they suspect that the deceased person was the bomber himself. However it is being ascertained whether he was trying to blow himself up or was trying to assemble the bomb when it accidentally triggered off.

The police now suspect that the mobile phone was the trigger to to explode the bomb. The police continue to search the debris at the blast site for more clues.