The person killed during the Ludhiana court blast on Thursday has been identified as former policeman who had been jailed for drug links.Gagandeep Singh, a former head constable, was dismissed from the service in 2019 and spent two years in jail, sources said.
Singh was in jail for alleged drug links and was released in September, they added.
Source said that though Singh’s face and body was disfigured after the blast, the family members confirmed his identity. While Singh was the lone casualty during the blast, many others were injured during the incident.Gagandeep Singh is a resident of GTB Nagar in Punjab’s Khanna district and was posted at Sadar Khanna Police Station. “He was booked in FIR No 75 dated Aug 11, 2019 u/s 21, 29-61-85 of the NDPS Act registered at PS STF Mohali Phase-4 and was under trial,” sources said.
Singh was tracked down using his sim card, which was recovered from the spot of the blast. Police had also recovered a mobile phone and data cards from the crime scene.Earlier, police sources said that the lone person killed during the blast might be the executor of the bomb. They added that positioning of the mobile phones and sim cards suggested that the person planting the improvised explosive device was killed in the process of assembling it.
On Thursday, a bomb went off near the washroom on the second floor of the district court complex killing one person and injuring six others. With all political leaders reaching Ludhiana following the incident, the explosion posed a serious security challenge in front of the state government. According to initial reports, police suspected that the man killed in the explosion had something to do with it. Either he was carrying the explosive device or was trying to assemble, cops said earlier.
