FATEHGARH SAHIB, JULY 24 In the Punjab Police headquarters in Chandigarh’s Sector 9, the full import of the arrest of 60-odd operatives of the Babbar Khalsa (some others were caught in Delhi) is still sinking in.While the police top brass are cautious in describing the majority of those held as ‘‘peripherals’’ and ‘‘accomplices,’’ the recovery of a huge arsenal of arms and ammunition, evidence of human bombs being prepared for strikes and, more importantly, the international links of BKI operatives have had an unnerving effect. And it has sent the message of a force caught napping.Punjab’s Additional Director General (Intelligence) J P Birdi concedes that after the chance arrest of BKI masterminds Jagtar Singh Hawara and Jaspal Raja on June 7, they were quite ‘‘blank’’ about the extent of the Punjab network.

‘‘We first recovered documents and diaries from Hawara’s female accomplices like Hardeep Kaur (arrested two days after him) and began a series of dig-out operations to neutralise the BKI modules,’’ he pointed out.

What’s worrying is that senior police officers and even Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh clinically admit that sizeable consignments of arms the duo smuggled were still untraced.

‘‘We have recovered three of the four consignments Hawara brought for use in BKI’s traditional semi-urban and rural pockets of Punjab,’’ Chief Minister Amarinder Singh told The Indian Express. ‘‘Many of the seven consignments that Raja brought via Jammu and Kashmir for strikes in Delhi are undetected.’’

Confronted with a resurgent Babbar Khalsa, the Punjab Police are now piecing together the larger picture of attempted revival of militancy, and have landed some startling evidence of Pakistan’s complicity. The question is: what was the police doing when such evidence was within easy reach?

For instance, there is the chance interception of a telephone conversation between BKI’s Pakistan head, Wadhawa Singh, and Jagtar Singh Hawara in which he gives him feedback on the May 22 blasts in New Delhi’s cinema halls.

‘‘Agein ton koi naya kaam karna hai te das ke karein (If you have to do some new operation, then tell me about it first)’’ Wadhawa Singh ticks him off, obviously not happy with the manner in which the Delhi strikes were organised.

In the conversation, Wadhawa Singh is also heard telling Hawara that their new Hindu recruits could also be trusted by him; that they should be careful while talking on the telephone and should concentrate on targeting ideological targets identified by the BKI.

Equally revealing are the results of the video interrogation the Punjab Police have conducted with the five men who have confessed to receiving arms training in Pakistan, though unlike the earlier days, in smaller groups and now even in deserted farmhouses located on the outskirts of Lahore.

One such video interrogation, viewed by The Indian Express, is that of Hardeep Goldi, who returned to India a week before the Delhi cinema blasts. Goldi’s confession lays bare the circuitous pattern of travel to Pakistan by BKI operatives.

Goldi says he reached Dubai via Bangkok and thanks to an ‘‘arrangement’’ in Dubai, boarded the flight to Lahore without getting his passport stamped. In Lahore, he received training in heavy and light arms and returned to India via the same route. While in Lahore, Goldi was instructed by Wadhawa Singh to report to Jagtar Singh Hawara.

  Who are they  

• Babbar Khalsa among oldest and most organised militant groups, with its origins in the Babbar Akali movement of 1920 • Chief Wadhawa Singh believed to be in Pak; Punjab police maintains a list of seven ‘‘hardcore’’ BKI militants and 34 ‘‘non-hardcore’’ militants • Punjab police lists show these militants residing in Pakistan, Germany, the US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands. • Unlike earlier BKI jathas, men trained by Hawara and Jaspal Raja worked in modules of three—one each for the technical, intelligence and operational parts of a strike • In its current phase, BKI has tried to hit selective targets instead of going in for shootouts

• That Punjab youth with criminal propensities searching for shortcuts for going abroad, besides ‘‘old harbourers’’ including women like Kuldeep Kaur, represented a new dimension of the Babbar Khalsa

• That Bhai Amrik Singh, the new ‘‘ambitious’’ face of the Damdami Taksal came in contact with Hawara and provided the religious infrastructure and training of human bombs. A dozen new recruits, including a few physically challenged ones, were raised as human bombs

• The Babbars have explored new routes for smuggling weapons and explosives via Jammu and Kashmir, along porous sectors of Punjab in the Ajnala and Tarn Taran sectors.

• Being a fundamentalist organisation, the BKI never permitted trimmers in their organisation. Now, even clean-shaven boys are taken as members in the set-up

As of now, Punjab policemen are compiling the increasing pile of interrogation reports of the arrested men. They are also investigating channels of funding for the group since there are intelligence reports of Hawara receiving around Rs 40 lakh for his operations after his January 2004 escape from Burail Jail.

Already under some pressure from his political rivals and human rights groups, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh last week held a marathon meeting with the police. He told The Indian Express: ‘‘The instructions I have given to the police is to be effective but not to indulge in competitive policing. I do not want a situation where one district of Punjab is competing with another in the tracing of human bombs.’’

DGP S S Virk promises: ‘‘We will not let the old days return.’’ The Babbar Khalsa, he said, was never dormant ‘‘but they have never been excessively active.’’

‘‘This is an attempted revival with a regeneration of peripheral groups. It’s evident that BKI recruits do not have ideological commitment or technical expertise. That’s why despite having so much RDX, they have not succeeded,’’ Virk said.