SANGRUR, JULY 25 The posters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other fanatics have been ripped off and the walls hastily re-painted. Every other day, a posse of policemen arrives at this semi-constructed house in Dhole village, Sangrur district, where members of a Jat Sikh family are sitting in the courtyard, forlorn and frightened. For they got their 19-year-old girl, Balwinder Kaur, married to Babbar Khalsa leader Jagtar Singh Hawara.

‘‘Hamne to shaadi ka rishta hi kar liya. Rishta kar liya! (we got into a marriage alliance, a marriage alliance),’’ wails the girl’s inconsolable mother, Kiranjit Kaur, ‘‘Us paapi ne kaha ki woh hamari ladki ko bahar le jayega. (That sinner told us he would take our daughter abroad.)’’

Soon after Hawara’s arrest on June 7, a Punjab Police party reached Dhole and took her entire family into custody.

They searched the house and found a cloth belt stitched with 4.5 kg of explosives, possibly to be worn by a human bomb being readied by Hawara, and one lakh rupees that Hawara had left with his bride.

The family was further disturbed when during his grilling, Hawara said he married Balwinder Kaur only for children.

After the hush-hush marriage at Sangrur’s Nankana gurdwara (an old English couple had been produced as witness for his purported NRI status), the couple rented a house in Patiala and lived together for a month.

While Balwinder Kaur is in jail, others in her family have been questioned and allowed to return to Dhole.

Hawara’s interrogation report, in fact, is now a coveted document. Much to the distress of Punjab Police, it has not been handed over by Delhi Police’s Special Branch, who arrested him.

A copy was, however, procured ‘‘unofficially’’ by the brass and the contents of the 14-page document, available with The Indian Express, show how easily Hawara subverted the policing system during his nine-year long incarceration in Burail Jail and how easily after his escape he picked recruits from semi-urban areas and armed them with weapons and explosives smuggled via Pakistan.

Hawara’s testimony reveals how he started his career in crime when he was just 15 years old by committing the murder of a granthi of Chamhor Sahib gurudwara.

  Hawara 3rd time lucky  

• First attempt, 1998 The first plan was to blast the walls of the jail with explosives. Two mobile phones were brought and Wadhawa Singh spoken to. The explosives were arranged by Didar Singh, who came from America, and smuggled into jail as ‘‘burfis’’ covered with silver foil. But the conspiracy was exposed when the man carrying the ‘‘burfis’’ was caught and the explosives seized. • Second attempt, 2002 The Babbar Khalsa detenues started digging a tunnel with a ‘khurpa’ when Hawara was lodged in the jail’s hospital barrack. They started from their bathroom, throwing the earth dug out into the toilet but had to stop since the bathroom got filled with water. Subsequently, due to a brawl with the jail staff, they were shifted to the isolated ward. • Third successful attempt, January 2004 For three months, the detenues worked six hours a day and dug a 60-foot long tunnel. The cell floor was broken with dumbbells and rods Hawara used for exercise and then ‘khurpas’ were used. A bulb was installed in the tunnel and a cellphone was at hand. The final digging took place on the night of January 21 when the power supply to the prison was disrupted by throwing an iron chain on the supply line. Four men escaped and two armed BKI operatives were waiting outside for them.

Hawara’s admissions to Delhi Police reveal that the circuitous route for getting arms training in Pakistan — adopted by the current crop of BKI recruits — was used by Hawara himself way back in 1994. In June 1994, he had reached Karachi by first travelling by bus to Kathmandu and then by air to Bangkok and then Lahore.

About his arms training, Hawara says, ‘‘We reached a jungle for arms training. The jeep was covered with a cloth...Wadhawa Singh (BKI’s Pakistan head) used to visit us in the camp...members of the ISI and Pakistan intelligence used to keep a close watch on our movements.’’

With this training, Hawara and eight other BKI operatives were tasked with the assassinaton of Chief Minister Beant Singh. One among them, Dilawar Singh, volunteered to be the human bomb and on August 31, 1995, the plan was put into action.

Hawara recalls Punjab’s worst act of terrorism: ‘‘As Beant Singh came out of the Secretariat to sit in his car, Dilawar Singh pulled on the switch. Beant Singh and others were killed in the bomb explosion.

As the car used in the explosion was recovered at the instance of Surinder (who had painted the car as a police car), the police picked up some others and the whole story was exposed.’’

Hawara was himself arrested on December 22 from the Jalandhar bus stand, where he tried to swallow a cyanide capsule but was overpowered.

It’s on the basis of the description of the hideouts and the names of his harbourers after his escape that the current arrest of over 70 BKI in Punjab and Delhi has taken place.

Hawara has told Delhi Police that he hid in sugarcane fields, with only dry fruit to eat for days after his escape.

He then contacted Wadhawa Singh’s son-in-law, Surinder Singh in Germany (a major base of the BKI) and began picking up new recruits from among the jailbirds he had encountered in Burail Jail, other unemployed youth and a few handicapped youth.

Having created a network of a brand new operatives, Hawara took up the fake identity of an NRI and approached Balwinder Kaur’s family through one Sukhdev Singh for her hand.

Now, even his admissions to Delhi Police has resulted in a fresh wave of arrests and crackdowns, the Punjab Police is waiting for their chance to confront their Most Wanted Man.