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| Photo Credit: The Hindu
Police on Wednesday (July 8, 2026) said they have successfully busted a cross-border and inter-state arms, narcotics and fake Indian currency notes (FICN) supply network with the arrest of three more people following a probe into the killing of a cashier at a pharmacy last month.
Chandigarh Police have also formally arrested the main conspirator of the narco terror network, members of which were allegedly involved in the cashier’s killing.
Akash Kumar alias Mani, Sachin Silvester and Gurmeet Singh Badshah, all from Tarn Taran, were arrested in an operation carried out by a team of Police Station Crime, Chandigarh Police.
Dharminder Singh alias Goli, the main conspirator, who acted at behest of a foreign handler, will be brought under production remand since he was already in Kapurthala jail in Punjab.
Goli arranged a meeting of Badshah and the shooters in the cashier’s killing. Police said Badshah had given shelter in his house to Sunny Mehra and Amit, the shooters in the pharmacy cashier killing case and provided pistol and cash and guided them.
A police statement said that police teams are also working to break the network of gangsters involved in cases of extortion and firing.
During the operation conducted in the Tarn Taran and Amritsar districts of Punjab, police arrested the three accused persons and recovered 3.028 kg of the narcotic drug ICE (Methamphetamine), fake currency notes having a face value of Rs 8 lakh, two sophisticated pistols and magazines, exposing a larger inter-state criminal network.
The leads came based on some arrests already made in the cashier murder case.
On June 13, two masked men had shot dead the pharmacy cashier, Janki Das (45), in broad daylight in Sector 11, Chandigarh. The incident was captured by a CCTV camera installed inside the shop.
The investigation in the case exposed a deeply entrenched, multi-layered criminal pipeline. Handlers based in Pakistan and foreign safe havens exploit Punjab’s geographic proximity to the border to drop contraband via low-flying drones.
Once the payload hits the ground, a tightly controlled local network takes over, said police.
Operating via end-to-end encrypted messaging applications to dodge intelligence agencies, foreign operatives coordinate with notorious jail-based kingpins, the statement said.
In this case, the strings were pulled by Dharminder Singh alias Goli, a hardened gangster with 32 previous criminal cases charging him with murder, extortion, and drug violations, currently running operations from behind the bars of Kapurthala Jail, it said.
Under Goli’s direction, local border-belt associates collected the drone-dropped sophisticated weaponry and narcotics. The syndicate then imported hitmen from Jammu & Kashmir, provided them with safehouses, test-fired the smuggled sophisticated pistols to ensure lethality, and mapped out reconnaissance targets before executing violent crimes.
The conspirators arranged illegal firearms, financial resources in the form of narcotics and cash and FICN, and vehicles to facilitate the crime in Chandigarh.
The investigation has also established that the same network was involved in the supply of narcotic drugs (ICE) and FICN, indicating the existence of a larger cross-border and inter-state organised crime syndicate.
Further investigation is in progress to identify and apprehend other associates involved in the conspiracy, trace the source of the recovered contraband and illegal weapons, and uncover the complete network behind the crime.
Published – July 09, 2026 06:39 am IST
