DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

The mastermind behind the 2016 Nabha jailbreak Ramanjit Singh was brought to Punjab early Friday after his extradition by authorities in Hong Kong and produced before a court, which remanded him to two-week judicial custody. He was arrested on Thursday after his extradition by Hong Kong in an operation coordinated by the CBI and the Punjab Police, officials said.

Singh alias Romi was brought to Nabha in Punjab's Patiala district, where his medical examination was done at the civil hospital. He was later produced before a court and sent to two-week judicial custody.

Officials had said that Romi was the key conspirator in the Nabha jailbreak incident in which six hardcore criminals, including two terrorists, managed to escape.

"The Global Operations Centre of Central Bureau of Investigation has coordinated with Punjab Police and INTERPOL NCB- Hong Kong for the return of a Red Notice Subject Ramanjit Singh from Hong Kong to India on August 22," a CBI spokesperson had said in a statement Thursday.

He said the CBI got a Red Notice issued against Romi from the INTERPOL General Secretariat on March 22, 2017, at the request of the Punjab Police.

The extradition proceedings against Singh, a resident of Bangi Ruldu village of Bathinda, were initiated in 2018.

On November 27, 2016, 16 criminals launched an attack on the prison and opened indiscriminate fire, managing to engineer the escape of six most-wanted criminals -- Harjinder Singh alias Vicky Gounder, Neeta Deol, Gurpreet Sekhon, Aman Dhotian and terrorists Harminder Mintoo and Kashmir Singh Galwaddi.

While Gounder was killed in a police encounter in January 2018 in Rajasthan, the others were arrested. Romi coordinated the attack on the maximum security Nabha jail by providing financial and logistical support to the escapees.

He had provided weapons and fake IDs to gain access to the prison and funded the gangsters' preparations to execute the jailbreak, they said.

Romi, who was arrested in June 2016 in a weapons recovery and fake credit cards case, got bail in August 2016 and fled to Hong Kong. He was held in Hong Kong in February 2018 following accusations of his involvement in a robbery there.

A Punjab Police team visited Hong Kong in June 2018 and secured his provisional arrest. He had been in judicial custody there since then.
(editor@dailyworld.in)