Amritsar: Mehal Singh Babbar, a notorious Babbar Khalsa militant, died of kidney failure on March 24 in Nankana Sahib, Pakistan. Babbar, who had been a proclaimed offender since 1990, was wanted in connection with militancy-related activities in Amritsar, Jalandhar, and Faridkot districts during the 1980s. He passed away at a private hospital in the region, and sources suggest he will likely be cremated on Wednesday evening.
Babbar, a former Indian Air Force officer, had been living in Pakistan since the early 1990s. He was also believed to have traveled to France in 2003. Recently, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) accused him of coordinating with gangsters and facilitating the smuggling of weapons into India from Pakistan. The NIA had named him the deputy chief of the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), a banned militant organization.
He was the brother of Sukhdev Singh Babbar, who was the head of BKI in 1984 and was killed in 1992. Babbar’s wife, Gurdev Kaur, lives in Amritsar. In the late 1980s, she and other female relatives of militants were reportedly detained by the then Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Batala, Gobind Ram. Ram was later killed in a bomb blast, following protests led by Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Darshan Singh Raggi.
