The National Investigation Agency (NIA) said in a statement that it on Tuesday carried out raids at 18 locations in nine districts of Haryana and Punjab in connection with three major cases linked to Pakistan-based drug terrorist Shehzad Bhatti.
The NIA said its officials also screened several individuals and seized digital devices and documents containing information related to various telecom networks, financial transactions and activities of people under the NIA’s scanner in the three cases.
Bhatti, a gangster-turned-terrorist backed by Pakistan’s spy agency ISI, has emerged as a key figure in recent investigations into terror attacks, organized crime and youth radicalization in India. Operating across the border, he is also the leader of narco-terrorism networks in Jammu and Kashmir and has recently floated a new outfit called Hindustan Taliban (TTH), officials said.
The NIA statement said: “All information and evidence collected during the search operations were sent for scrutiny as well as forensic and technical examination to uncover the larger cross-border conspiracy.”
“Notices have been issued to some individuals to join the investigation for further examination as part of the ongoing NIA probe aimed at unraveling the larger conspiracy behind the network run by gangster-turned-terrorist Bhatti across the border. Search operations on Tuesday focused on identifying Bhatti’s associates and others associated with the terror plot related to the three cases,” the statement added.
According to the federal agency, a direct link has been established to Bhatti in the March 2025 grenade attack on the residence of social media influencer Roger Sandhu in Jalandhar in Punjab.
The NIA investigation also revealed that Bhatti was the mastermind behind two other major security breaches: the November 2025 blast at the women’s police station in Sirsa, Haryana, and the January 2026 blast at the Baldev Nagar police station in Ambala, Haryana.
