Elusive Gounder dares cops with killings

FUGITIVE Has given police the slip twice since escaping from Nabha jail

CHANDIGARH: Not only he has been able to keep himself off the long hands of law, gangster Vicky Gounder, who had fled the Nabha high-security jail in November last year, is striking at will when it comes to eliminating rivals. Not surprising that Gounder is currently the most sought-after outlaw for the Punjab Police.

Even as there are various intelligence reports available with the police that Gounder had been moving in and out of Punjab after escaping from jail, police have failed to nab him. On Thursday, he led his accomplices and killed three members of a rival gang in Gurdaspur.

Sources in the police say that the killings were the result of tugof-war among gangs for supremacy in Majha region. “These killings have once again brought to fore the fact that hardcore gangsters like Gounder have no fear of the police,” a source said.

After Nabha jailbreak, Gounder was spotted in Mansa in December last year. In February, Punjab Police got leads that he was hiding in an NRI’s house in Moga. But the gangster slipped away from the spot minutes before the police reached the two spots, sources said. Gounder, along with three others, had used a stolen Hyundai Verna car to flee from Moga just before the police arrested his four aides from a house at Dhudike village on February 12.

The Punjab Counter Intelligence Team (PCIT) had arrested Nabha jailbreak mastermind Gurpreet Singh Sekhon and his three aides, including his cousin Manvir Sekhon of Makhu village and Rajwinder Singh Raja, alias Sultan, of Mangewal village in Moga, and gangster Kulwinder Sidana, brother of gangster Surinder

Sidana, after raiding a house.

As per a senior police official, the police department was on its toes to map Gounder and, on Friday, senior officials grilled some of Gounder’s friends lodged in jail.

Police are also suspecting the role of Jalandhar-based gangster Prema Lahoria, who might have assisted Gounder in the Gurdaspur killings.

Jalandhar, Rajasthan, Moga, Mansa has been Gounder’s hideouts since he escaped from the Nabha jail. The police have arrested four of the six escapees.