The police in the Indian state of Punjab has arrested an Australia based non-resident Indian wanted in connection with an incident of jailbreak in November 2016.
Kultar Singh Goldy was arrested on Sunday for allegedly harbouring Gurpreet Singh Sekhon-a gangster accused of masterminding the Nabha jailbreak to free himself and five others.
In February 2017, the police charged Mr Goldy with offences related to harbouring an offender escaped from custody after gangster Gurpreet Singh Sekhon and his three accomplices who aided him in the jailbreak were arrested from his house in Dhudike village in Moga district. The police also claimed to have recovered weapons from the house.
The Punjab and Haryana High court had granted Mr Goldy an interim protection from an arrest in April last year while directing him to join the investigation and cooperate with the police.
At the time, his lawyer told the court that Mr Goldy had been living in Australia since July 2009 and visited India in January 2017-two months after the jailbreak incident. He also told the court that on the day of the arrest of the escaped convict and his accomplices from his house, he was in Ludhiana.
However, despite the court’s direction to him to cooperate with the investigators, police said Mr Goldy continued to evade them. He was declared a ‘proclaimed offender’ in December last year.
The Senior Superintendent of Police of Moga, Gurpreet Singh Toor claimed that Mr Goldy gave shelter to the escaped convict despite knowing he had fled from the jail.
10 attackers armed with firearms, some of them dressed in police uniforms, had attacked a high-security jail in Nabha in Punjab and freed six inmates, including two militants. While the police have arrested nearly three dozen man in connection with the jailbreak, all the escaped convicts have still not been arrested.
Mr Goldy will appear before a court on Monday.
