Police officers escort Gurmeet Singh, also known as Jagtar Singh Tara, from India, as they arrive at the criminal court in Bangkok on January 6, 2015. PHOTO: REUTERS
Gurmeet Singh, 37, escaped from a high-security Indian jail in 2004 while on trial for involvement in the assassination of Punjab chief minister Beant Singh nearly a decade earlier. In 2007 he was sentenced in his absence to life imprisonment, along with five others.
Thai police arrested Singh, also known as Jagtar Singh or Tara Singh, on Monday at a house he was renting near the eastern beach resort of Pattaya, local commander Suttisak Wantee told AFP.
"He has been living illegally in Thailand for four months," Suttisak said.
A Bangkok court approved his extradition to India on Tuesday.
Beant Singh was killed by a Sikh suicide bomber outside the heavily-guarded state secretariat complex in the city of Chandigarh along with 15 other people in August 1995.
Radical Sikh groups had held him responsible for abuses by security forces in the suppression of a Sikh nationalist insurgency in Punjab in the 1980s.
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Dear Friends, The story is like this, after escaping from India he was living in Punjab ( Pakistan) for some time. He has travelled to aboroad a few times including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and finally to Thailand. It is a fairly known fact that he is faciliated/ supported by some influential agency in Pakistan as he was able to obtain a Pak passport. He has entered Thailand using a Pak passport and hence he is Pakistani fugitive as far as Thai authorites are concerned. Now he will be extradicated to India based on the evidence provided by the Indian agencies.
"How come he is a Pakistani fugitive"
@AsR: Only Pakistani media in this world bashes and demoralizes its own nation. ET plz publish as it does not violate anything.
where is Pakistan in all of this?
Blame Pakistan for everything
He will be received with open arms by the Panjab police. He will be gone for twenty years. Happy holiday Tara Ji.
He is an Indian born in Hawara, Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India.