Punjab’s most wanted gangster Jaipal Bhullar and his close aide Jassi Kharar, were killed in a joint operation by Punjab Police, West Bengal Police and central security agencies on Wednesday. The encounter took place at Shahpurji Enclave in Kolkata around 3:30pm.
Punjab Police have been chasing Jaipal Bhullar since last 20 days in connection with the killing of two assistant sub-inspectors in Jagraon. Besides, he was wanted in Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh for over 40 cases related to murder, extortion, kidnapping, robbery and smuggling.
Jaipal Singh Bhullar alias Manjit Singh, son of a retired Assistant-Sub-Inspector from Punjab police, entered the crime world in 2003.
In 2003, at Speed Fund Academy, a Punjab government sports training centre in Ludhiana, childhood friends Jaipal and Amandeep Singh alias Happy of Deora village in Ferozepur, had met again.
Jaipal, a hammer-thrower, and Happy, a bodybuilder, had lived close by in Ferozepur, both sons of cops.
Happy’s father, sub-inspector Desh Raj, was already retired then and he, along with Happy, planned the kidnapping of Chirag, son of their close relative. Happy got Jaipal — who was into petty crime in Ferozepur before coming to Ludhiana — and other friends involved in the get-rich-quick plan. All of them landed in the Ludhiana jail instead. It was far from the end.
In July 2004, seven men, five of them barely in their 20s, arrested for the sensational kidnapping of seven-year-old Chirag, son of a cinema-hall owner in Ludhiana, among them was Jaipal Singh, a Ferozepur boy.
In the Ludhiana central jail, Jaipal met Rajiv alias Raja, when the latter landed there in 2006 for loot and murder of three Ludhiana jewellers. Jaipal and Raja ganged up. Once out on bail, Jaipal met Shera of Khubban village, Fazilka district (then part of Ferozepur), at a hammer-throw event in Patiala that both were participating in.
Shera was a national-level player, studying in BA-II at Sri Guru Gobind Singh College, Sector 26, Chandigarh, and son of a food and supplies department inspector. He was planning to go to New Zealand at the time. Jaipal, whose father had met with an accident, got Shera to “help” him as his family was facing a financial crunch. The task: Get Raja freed from jail.
That happened in January 2009, when the duo helped Raja flee from police custody at the Barnala bus stand. In the sensational escape, Jaipal fired in the air and assaulted the cops who were transferring Raja from the Ludhiana to the Bathinda jail.
Gang gets going
Jaipal and Raja put together a dreaded gang of highway robbers. Shera was a part of it, while others were Chandu alias Chand Miyaan, Harjot Singh, a kabaddi player; and Harinder Singh Tinu, a former shot-putter who was pursuing a law course at Panjab University in Chandigarh and was the son of a Chandigarh police inspector. Sports, and fathers being in the police, were common threads here too.
In the first half of 2009, they had already robbed a gun house in Hoshiarpur, looted money from banks in Panchkula and Mohali; robbed a Chandigarh businessman and a BJP leader in Panchkula; and jacked several flashy cars on the highways. Raja was leading the gang in Haryana; Jaipal, in Punjab.
In June 2009, Raja and some of the gang members were arrested by the Panchkula police. A month later, Jaipal and his team were arrested by the Chandigarh police. They were taken on production warrants to 27 police stations in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. But, in most cases, they were acquitted with witnesses reluctant to speak up. In other cases, they got bail.
Rocky in Burail jail
During their time in Chandigarh’s Burail jail, Jaipal and his gang came in touch with Fazilka’s Rocky, who was lodged there — along with Jaipal’s old buddy Happy Deora — since July 2008 for the murder of Prabhjinder Singh Dimpy, a Chandigarh-based gangster and his associate-turned-enemy.
While seemingly having grouped together under Rocky there, differences emerged after Jaipal and his men were acquitted by a Chandigarh court in July 2010 and the gang resumed operations in Punjab. Shera came to the forefront of running Jaipal’s gang with the help of a new recruit, Gurpreet Singh Sekhon; Jaipal shifted operations to Rajasthan and got into smuggling of drugs.
Also Read: Punjab’s most wanted Gangster Jaipal Bhullar killed in encounter near Kolkata
Gang realignment and war
Rocky, meanwhile, started taking Happy under his wings; at which Shera killed Happy in July 2012 in Ferozepur. In turn, Shera’s run ended two months later, in September 2012, when he was killed by the Punjab police in an encounter in Bathinda. The tip-off was reportedly provided by Sukhdeep Singh Sekhon Karmiti of Rocky’s gang. Karmiti was then killed allegedly by Jaipal’s gang at a dog show in Ferozepur around a year later.
Jaipal’s gang was allegedly behind the murder of gangster Sukha Kahlon (Kahlwan), too, in January 2015 for which his accomplices Harjinder Singh alias Vicky Gounder, Chandu and Kulpreet Deol alias Neeta were arrested last year.
On January 5 this year, the Mohali police arrested Jaipal’s three close associates from Ludhiana on charges of smuggling heroin and other drugs from Pakistan. It seemed Jaipal had been weakened. But apparently he hit back, striking right at the top of the rival gang with Rocky’s murder; for which his old associate Tirath Dhilwan and he are now wanted.