Director General of Police P C Dogra addressing mediapersons said Billa was closely associated with Jagtar Singh Hawara, chief accused in the assassination case of former chief minister Beant Singh and kingpin of the Burail Jail conspiracy. A native of Sidhpur village, Billa was arrested by a Fatehgarh Sahib district police party from Jamshedpur in Bihar with the help of the local police, he said.

Nabbed on October 9 as part of Punjab Police's recently-launched Operation Khoj

, the 25-year-old, who had been harbouring top militants, used to assist militants in trafficking lethal weapons under the guise of running a transport company at Jamshedpur. The police team, led by Fatehgarh Sahib Superintendent of PoliceParamraj Singh, impounded from him loaded pistols, explosives and some modern devices.

Dogra said the ammunition recovered from Billa included two AK-47 rifles, 10 kg of RDX, 17 stick bombs, 15 small rockets, two HE-36 grenades and 11 detonators, besides 150 rounds of assorted bore, four AK-47 magazines, a revolver and a walkie-talkie remote.

Interrogations have revealed that Billa was told by Jagtar to hand over another set of arms brought from Pakistan and dumped by Babbar Khalsa chief Baldev Singh Hawara, who was later killed. ``It is learnt that Billa figured among the mercenaries assisting a Babbar Khalsa team from abroad which entered India recently,'' he added.

Dogra said Billa, a close crony of Sarabjit Singh Sidhupur nabbed two months ago, used to pay short visits to his native place to locate the weapons stored by slain Baldev.

On learning that Billa was running a transport company in Jamshedpur, the Fatehgarh Sahib police initiated contacts with the Bihar police. Both worked in tandem andnabbed the militant, who was brought to his home state after the necessary legal formalities, the police chief added.

During the questioning, the accused also confessed that he used to receive messages from his accomplices imprisoned in Burail Jail. Billa's role in the infamous conspiracy was to receive details about the weapons being dumped at various places and assist them in raising a terrorist cadre. Some of associates in the jail were those he had harboured in Jamshedpur. They include Jagtar Panjola, Harmit Tochi, Balwinder Jatana and Charanjit Channi besides the coterie's erstwhile chief Baldev, Dogra said.