Pakistani spy who helped jailed terrorists escape gets 2 more years

CHANDIGARH - A local court here Thursday sentenced a Pakistani national, undergoing seven-year jail term for spying, to two years’ additional imprisonment for helping terrorists, including the alleged assassin of Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, escape from jail in 2004.

The 28-year-old Abid Mehmood was guilty of criminal conspiracy and of facilitating the escape of dreaded terrorists, including Beant Singh’s alleged assassin Jagtar Singh Hawara and his two accomplices, from the high-security Burail jail in January 2004, though an over 100-foot-long tunnel they dug.

Mehmood was sentenced to seven years in jail in March this year on the charges of spying. However, as he has been in jail since 2003, when he was arrested from Sector-34 here, along with two others, he was due to be released some time next year. But now he will have to remain in jail for two more years.

Mehmood is from Liaqatpur on Pakistan, and lived there with his parents and elder brother, said a police official.

According to the police, Mehmood was living in Chandigarh, posing as Nihal Chauhan and claiming to be a native of Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. The police recovered a fake voter identity card, bogus sports certificates and a digital camera from him.

Maps containing information about infantry battalions, armoured units, artillery and air defence regiments and other sensitive information about the military deployment were also recovered from him.

Initially, Mehmood said he was a software engineer and he had gone to Nepal before returning to India. Later, however, he confessed before the police that he had secret documents related to India’s defence.