Chandigarh, June 27 (IANS) Notorious jailed gangster Jaggu Bhagwanpuria’s mother Harjit Kaur was shot dead by two bike-borne assailants in Punjab’s Batala town, police said on Friday.

Bhagwanpuria is also an accused in the killing of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala. Kaur was going somewhere in an SUV when the goons came on a bike and opened fire on Thursday night near her house in the Urban Estate area, killing her and her driver Karanvir Singh.

She was referred to a hospital in Amritsar, but she succumbed to the bullet injuries, a police official said.

The Bambiha gang has claimed responsibility for the crime.

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) had arrested Bhagwanpuria under the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (PIT NDPS) Act.

In March, he was shifted from the high-security Bathinda Central Jail to Silchar Jail in Assam as authorities were suspecting that detained gangsters were running drug syndicates from Punjab’s prisons.

Bhagwanpuria, against whom 128 FIRs have been registered in Punjab and other states, was arrested in a murder case in 2015 and, since then, has been lodged in several jails, previously in Punjab.

In the singer Moosewala’s murder case, it was Bhagwanpuria and gangster Lawrence Bishnoi who had hatched a conspiracy to kill him. However, later, both fell apart.

Bhagwanpuria, a native of Gurdaspur district, is considered the most dreaded gangster of Punjab after Bishnoi and has more than five cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for hatching conspiracies to disturb communal harmony in Punjab.

He is facing 15 cases of arms and drug smuggling.

On his shifting to Assam, the NCB had said then that Bhagwanpuria was moved out of Punjab as he had “established linkages” with international operatives in Canada, the US and Pakistan. His relocation was a must to disrupt the ecosystem, facilitating continued criminal activities, it added.

–IANS

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