NEW DELHI: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has carried out searches at 10 locations across Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi as part of its investigation into the 2024 Neemrana hotel firing incident, officials said on Monday.
The case is linked to Canada-based Khalistani terrorist Arsh Dalla, who is wanted in India for his alleged involvement in multiple violent crimes and terror-related activities, they added.
Dalla has been declared a proclaimed offender in more than 50 cases, including murder, attempted murder, extortion, and terror financing. A Red Corner Notice was issued against him in May 2022, and he was officially designated a terrorist by the Indian government in 2023.
The attack, in which 35 shots were fired on September 8, last year all around the premises of Hotel Highway King in Neemrana, Rajasthan, was aimed at terrorising and threatening people, the officials said.
“They had used prohibited weapons and also threatened the hotel’s owner and manager for extortion money. The manager had also earlier received several threat calls from international numbers,” a spokesperson of the NIA said in a statement.
The NIA, which had taken over the case in December, seized several electronic devices and other "incriminating" materials during the searches conducted at the premises of the accused and suspects engaged in promoting violent criminal activities on Saturday, he said.
These “accused/suspects had been involved in providing financial support and in carrying out acts of violence and terror at the behest of designated individual terrorist Arsh Dalla and his associate Dinesh Gandhi”, the spokesperson said.
Dalla’s associates have been engaged in extortion through such terror and violent acts to raise funds for banned Khalistani terrorist outfits, the NIA alleged, adding that businessmen and other targets were identified by these gangsters and their aides, who would threaten and coerce the targets into paying off huge sums.