Punjab police bring back a gang suspect from Moldova in a first for the force
Amritpal Singh is accused of conspiring in the murder of a man shot outside his Amritsar home while on parole. The Court of Chisinau approved his extradition in May; his appeal failed in July.
Punjab Police brought Amritpal Singh, also known as Amritpal Dalam, back to India from Moldova on Saturday — the force's first extradition from a European country.
A team from the Anti-Gangster Task Force, led by SP Bikramjit Singh Brar, travelled to Moldova and took him into custody at Chisinau Airport the previous day.
The case against him
Police allege Amritpal ran the Bhagwanpuria syndicate while the gangster Jaggu Bhagwanpuria was in jail. He has 21 cases registered against him.
The murder at the centre of the extradition is that of Dharamjit Singh, who was serving a life term for murder in Amritsar Central Jail. He had got into a fight with Bhagwanpuria there, and Bhagwanpuria and Amritpal would tell him they would eventually have him killed, according to ThePrint's account.
Dharamjit was shot in September 2025, nearly two weeks after being released on parole. He returned home around midnight and was waiting for his wife Pallavi to open the door when she saw three men on motorcycles fire at him. He later died at a private hospital in Amritsar.
Amritsar Police arrested the shooters and found, they say, that the conspiracy had been hatched by Amritpal and by Ankush, also known as Bahman, who is based in Australia.
These are police allegations. Amritpal has not been tried.
How he was traced
Moldovan authorities detained Amritpal in February this year while he was attempting to cross the Otaci state border into Ukraine, Punjab DGP Gaurav Yadav said.
Punjab Police then began extradition proceedings through a specialised wing.
"During these proceedings, the 'Court of Chisinau' granted the extradition of Amritpal Singh to India on 26 May, 2026," Yadav said in a statement. He added that the appeal against that order "was also rejected by the 'Court of Appeal Centru' on 16 July, 2026, thereby making the extradition order final".
The operation
Yadav described the extradition as the culmination of a six-month intelligence-led international manhunt, codenamed Operation Eastern Reach.
It involved sustained surveillance, strategic intelligence gathering and coordination with national and international agencies, he said.
Six months from detention in February to arrival in India in September is a fast timeline for an extradition. Two court stages in Moldova — the grant in May and the appeal in July — account for most of it.
Why a first matters
Extradition from Europe requires a receiving state to satisfy a European court on the treatment an accused person will face. Establishing that once creates a precedent the same force can point to next time.
Punjab Police have pursued gang members who have moved abroad for several years; this is the first occasion on which a European jurisdiction has returned one.
The man
According to police records, Amritpal studied to Class 12. ThePrint reports that he has been running the Bhagwanpuria syndicate during Bhagwanpuria's imprisonment.
The second man named in the alleged conspiracy, Ankush alias Bahman, is described as being based in Australia and has not been reported as detained.
What follows
Amritpal now faces the cases registered against him in Punjab, including the Dharamjit Singh murder. None has been tried, and the accounts of his role come from police statements rather than from evidence tested in court.
