Patiala: In its pursuit to put those involved in the sensational Nabha jailbreak incident behind bars, Friday's encounter carried out by the Organised Crime Control Unit (OCCU) of the Punjab Police was the first one in which three gangsters Harjinder Singh, alias Vicky Gounder, Prema Lahoria and their unidentified accomplice were gunned down in a hamlet of Rajasthan, close to Punjab border.
The OCCU has so far made 35 arrests in the Nabha jailbreak case. Those arrested include three gangsters Kulpreet Singh, alias Neeta Deol, Amandeep Dhothian, Gurpreet Sekhon and Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) chief Harminder Singh Mintoo, who had escaped from the Nabha maximum security jail on November 27, 2016. The OCCU had to engage in a fierce gunfire when they had arrested Gurpreet Sekhon, his cousin Manvir, alias Money Sekhon, Sultan of Mangewal village and Kulwinder Singh from Dhudike village in Moga district on February 12, 2017. However, none had been injured in this incident and the cops had managed to nab all four without any damage.
One of the top officers, who had been associated with the OCCU operations, said police investigators had relied heavily on intelligence inputs and electronic surveillance to make the arrests due to which there had been no bloodshed. He said the police teams used to gather considerable information about the presence of the accused and then swoop down quickly to deny the accused an opportunity to react. However, in case of Gounder, he had already given cops the slip on three previous occasions — once in Gurdaspur, then in Mohali and later in Yamunanagar in Haryana.
