Punjab Police were closely tracking their most wanted gangster, Vicky Gounder, since January 17. The trail paid off eight days later with the encounter at Pakki village in Rajasthan’s Sri Ganganagar district 50 metres from the Punjab border on Friday.
Gounder and his accomplices Prema Lahoriyaand Sukhpreet Singh were killed in the police encounter at the house of another gangster, Lakhwinder Singh, alias Lakha.
A police official in the know of the Organised Crime Control Unit’s plan said on condition of anonymity that the OCCU got certain mobile numbers from gangster Harsimrandeep Singh, alias Simma Behbal, who was arrested from Dehradun on January 13.
Vicky Gounder and Lahoriya didn’t use mobile phones but Sukhpreet did and his phone helped the police track their location.
The official said Behbal was caught on a tip-off about his location by his accomplice, Gaurav Kumar Miglani, who was arrested for sheltering gangsters in neighbouring Haryana, on December 23, 2017.
While monitoring the phone numbers provided by Behbal, the police found a Delhi-based number continuously in touch with a number active in one of Punjab’s jails.
The person using the Delhi-based number was passing on information to gangster Sukhpreet Singh, alias Buddha Khosa, who was with Gounder and Lahoriya. Sukhpreet was a co-accused in the killing of Jaitu rice mill owner Ravinder Kochhar, alias Pappu Kochhar, on July 29, 2017.
Gounder and Lahoriya didn’t use mobile phones but Sukhpreet did and his phone helped the police track their location.
