Patiala, January 26: Notorious gangster and Nabha jailbreak mastermind Vicky Gounder and his accomplice Prema Lahoriya were killed in an encounter with Punjab Police at a village in Sri Ganganagar district on the Punjab and Rajasthan border on Friday evening.
Gounder was shot twice. The gangsters also fired over a dozen rounds at the police.
Another unknown accomplice of the gangsters has been rushed to Ganganagar hospital in Rajasthan where he is also reportedly critical.
They were shot dead in a heavy exchange of fire. Two Punjab Police cops also sustained injuries in the abdomen and chest. The two policemen were referred to a hospital with serious injuries.
A team headed by AIG Intelligence Gurmeet Chauhan and Inspector Bikramjit Brar shot dead the duo.
Harjinder Bhullar (27) alias Jinder alias Vicky Gounder was the son of farmer Mehal Singh Bhullar, of Sarawan Bodla village in former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s home turf Lambi.
Gounder was one of the deadliest gangsters of the state, who broke out of maximum-security Nabha jail on November 27 in 2016.
Gounder (meaning a goon in local parlance) was the prime accused in the killing of Sukha Kahlwan, a gangster. He had allegedly danced over the body and filmed the act before fleeing. His audacity and claim to fame is he once uploaded a post on Facebook and dared the then Bathinda SSP to arrest him.
A 20-member police team took part in the operation in which the two gangsters were shot dead.
The gangsters were hiding in the village since Thursday night and the police were tracking their movement. The alleged lead came from within a jail in Punjab where a phone call was intercepted between a lodged gangster and an outsider in Delhi. Police acted on the tip off and conducted a raid.
