Chandigarh: Police on Wednesday said they had busted a cross-border and inter-state arms, narcotics and fake Indian currency notes (FICN) supply network following a probe into the killing of a pharmacy cashier here last month.
Chandigarh Police have also formally arrested the alleged main conspirator behind the narco-terror network, members of which were allegedly involved in the cashier's killing.
Akash Kumar alias Mani, Sachin Silvester and Gurmeet Singh Badshah, all from Tarn Taran, were arrested in an operation carried out by a team from the Crime Branch of Chandigarh Police.
Dharminder Singh alias Goli, the main conspirator, who acted at the behest of a foreign handler, will be brought under production remand as he was already in Kapurthala Jail in Punjab.
Police said Goli arranged a meeting between Badshah and the shooters involved in the cashier's killing. Police said Badshah had given shelter at his house to Sunny Mehra and Amit, the shooters in the pharmacy cashier killing case, and provided them with a pistol and cash, and guided them.
A police statement said police teams are also working to break up the network of gangsters involved in cases of extortion and firing.
During the operation in Punjab's Tarn Taran and Amritsar districts, police arrested the three accused and recovered 3.028 kg of methamphetamine (ICE), fake currency notes with a face value of Rs 8 lakh, and two sophisticated pistols with magazines, exposing a larger inter-state criminal network.
The leads emerged from arrests already made in the cashier murder case.
On June 13, two masked men allegedly shot dead pharmacy cashier Janki Das (45) in broad daylight in Chandigarh's Sector 11. The incident was captured on a CCTV camera installed inside the shop.
The investigation has uncovered a deeply entrenched, multi-layered criminal pipeline. Handlers based in Pakistan and foreign safe havens exploit Punjab's geographic proximity to the border to drop contraband via low-flying drones. Once the payload hits the ground, a tightly controlled local network takes over, police said.
Police said the network operated through end-to-end encrypted messaging applications to evade intelligence agencies, with foreign operatives coordinating with jail-based kingpins. Under Goli's direction, local associates allegedly collected the drone-dropped weapons and narcotics, arranged safe houses for the shooters, test-fired the smuggled pistols and carried out reconnaissance before the crime.
The conspirators arranged illegal firearms, financial resources in the form of narcotics, cash and FICN, and vehicles to facilitate the crime in Chandigarh.
The investigation has also established that the same network was involved in the supply of narcotic drugs (ICE) and FICN, indicating the existence of a larger cross-border and inter-state organised crime syndicate.
Further investigation is under way to identify and apprehend other associates involved in the conspiracy, trace the source of the recovered contraband and illegal weapons, and uncover the wider network behind the crime.
