A Faridkot court on Saturday remanded gangster Vikramjeet Singh, alias Vikram Brar, a key aide of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, in three days’ police custody in connection with a ₹50 lakh extortion case.

The police had brought Brar on a day’s transit remand from Delhi on Friday. He was presented in the court of judicial magistrate Ajaypal Singh, who sent him to three-day police custody.

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On July 26, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) brought Brar from the UAE and arrested him. The arrest was made on Tuesday in a terror-gangster conspiracy case that the central agency is investigating.

The Faridkot police on Friday moved an application in a Delhi court, seeking the transit remand after Brar’s three-day NIA custody ended. The Delhi court granted the remand after which the Faridkot police arrested Brar.

The Faridkot police say that Sumit Kumar, who runs a garments shop in Kotkapura, got a call from Canada-based gangster Goldy Brar on July 18, 2021, demanding ₹50 lakh as extortion money. Goldy claimed he is an aide of gangsters Lawrence Bishnoi and Kala Jathedi. He threatened to kill Sumit and his family if they failed to pay up. Goldy had made the call on Bishnoi’s directions. Brar also made similar calls on Bishnoi’s directions, the police said.

Brar is accused in another attempt to murder case of a Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda follower, Shakti Singh. Singh is an accused in the 2015 Bargari sacrilege case. On October 2, 2021, Faridkot police said that they had foiled an attempt on the life of Shakti Singh, with the arrest of a resident of Jeonwala village with two 9mm pistols.

The NIA said that Brar operated a ‘communications control room’ for the Bishnoi gang from the UAE. “This control room was also facilitating calls of Bishnoi and Goldy Brar, and he used to make extortion calls to various people,” the NIA statement said.

According to the NIA, Brar helped Goldy in executing Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala’s murder. Though Mansa police have not named Brar in the Moose Wala murder case so far, sources said they are likely to question him in the case as well.

Moose Wala was shot dead by six assailants at Jawahar Ke village in Punjab’s Mansa on May 29 last year.