Jalandhar’s Zeeshan Akhtar behind grenade attack at BJP leader’s house

At 22, Mohammad Zeeshan Akhtar has emerged as the key conspirator behind the second grenade attack in his hometown of Jalandhar in Punjab in less than a month.

Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh on Tuesday afternoon, Punjab Police special director general of police Arpit Shukla named Akhtar as the key conspirator behind the grenade blast at the house of senior BJP leader and former state minister Manoranjan Kalia in the wee hours.

The blast comes less than a month after Akhtar, along with Pakistan-based ISI agent Shahzaad Bhatti, lobbed a grenade at YouTuber Rozer Sandhu’s house at Raipur Rasoolpur village in Jalandhar district. There was no loss of life and damage to property as the grenade didn’t explode in the attack on March 16. Seven people were arrested and Bhatti, Zeeshan were among those booked under Section 109 (murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Explosives Act and also under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) at the Maqsudan police station.

Akhtar is wanted in the killing of NCP leader and former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddiqui on October 12 last year. He has been operating from a foreign land as in a video released by him in February, he claimed to left India with the help of Bhatti, a sympathiser of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.

According to central agencies, Akhtar is based in Azerbaijan.

After the attack on Sandhu’s house last month, Bhatti uploaded a series of videos on his social media accounts. In one of them, he showed six grenades and sophisticated pistols provided to his men in Punjab through Akhtar.

From extortion to murder, labourer’s son faces 11 cases

Akhtar faces 11 FIRs of heinous crimes in police stations across Jalandhar district, including two related to offences in Kaithal district of neighbouring Haryana.

Also known as ‘Jaisy Silander and ‘Julmi’, Akhtar’s family originally belongs to Maharashtra and shifted to Jalandhar’s Shanker village in Nakodar sub division before his birth in 2003.

His first brush with the crime was a case of extortion of a local businessman in September 2021 and the FIR in the case was registered in Nakodar police station.

His father, Mohammad Jameel, worked as a marble-fitting labourer in the village.

According to police records, Akhtar was born at Shanker in 2003, but the family sent him to study at a “madarsa (for Islamic education)” in Beed district of Maharashtra. Later, he was shifted to Afjal Garh madarsa in Bijnor district in Uttar Pradesh. He joined a government school at Shanker village only in Class 6.

According to police sources, after completing his matriculation from the village school, Akhtar accompanied his father to work where he had a fight with a client, who accused him of stealing a mobile phone. The issue was settled amicably.

He was arrested by Jalandhar Rural police on July 6, 2022, for a robbery and also booked under the Arms Act. He was kept in the Kapurthala and Patiala jails before he got bail in June 2023.

Shifted to Haryana, in touch with Lawrence Bishnoi

A senior Punjab Police official said after release from jail, Akhtar did not visit Jalandhar and shifted his activities to Haryana. “He wanted to make a big entry in the world of crime and used to share that one day he will perform a ‘big task’,” said the police official.

Akhtar came in contact with jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi through his aide Vikramjit Singh, alias Vikram Brar. On Vikram’s directions, he met other members of the Bishnoi gang in Punjab’s Kotkapura town.

Brar was arrested and deported from the UAE last year in connection with Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala’s killing.

“Akhtar along with Bishnoi gang members have committed several crimes, including the murder of Bhupinder Singh, a tailor in Tarn Taran in August 2022. Following this, he was allegedly involved in extortion of ₹30 lakh from a Nakodar trader, robberies at petrol pumps in Jalandhar and Kapurthala and carjacking incidents,” a senior police official said.

The official said that on the directions of Lawrence Bishnoi, he smuggled five sophisticated weapons from Madhya Pradesh and provided them to other gang members in different parts of the state.

“His name had cropped up in the Sidhu Moosewala killing in 2022, but the investigators failed to find his link with the key accused,” the official added.