Turban for Facebook, trimmed beard, short hair in real

CHANDIGARH: Even police were afraid of going into the raid to capture gangster Dilpreet Singh Dahan on Monday here. The reason—he was armed, dangerous, and in his original, unfamiliar look.
His public identity of an orthodox Sikh was only to fool the cops. He was an almost-clean-shaven guy with a close-crop haircut under his wig, artificial beard, and turban in which he appeared in public and on Facebook. Police saw his original look for the first time on Tuesday. He had short hair, trimmed beard, and no headgear. But for the informer’s accurate input, the Punjab and Chandigarh cops of the raiding party could not have identified him.



Gangster Dilpreet Singh Dahan


Police confirmed twice before closing in on his car. They pelted it with stones when he tried to escape and were lucky that one of their retaliatory bullets hit him in the right thigh. “The gangster would don a wig, artificial beard, and turban in his public posts to hide his identity,” Jalandhar range senior superintendent of police (SSP) G P S Bhullar told the media here at the Punjab Police headquarters in Sector 9.

The gangster had not only a pistol in hand but also a single-shot rifle, an extra gun barrel, and 100 live cartridges in the car’s boot, which also contained two hockey sticks, a leather ball, a truff ball (a dotted, hard-plastic hockey ball for practice), two registration plates of a Haryana numbers, a wig, and an artificial beard. A flavored hookah and fresh-packed food lay next to the driver’s seat. Inspector Amanjot of the crime branch said: “The live cartridges were hidden under the sheet over the spare tyre.”