The gang of Nabha jailbreak gangster Vicky Gounder has been allegedly involved in several crimes recently, causing major embarrassment to the police and government. Express Archive The gang of Nabha jailbreak gangster Vicky Gounder has been allegedly involved in several crimes recently, causing major embarrassment to the police and government. Express Archive

A SUDDEN spate of crimes across Punjab has caught the new government off guard. In the 10 weeks since it assumed office, the Congress government has been facing a fresh wave of gangwars, bank robberies and killings that are being described as political murders. In the latest case of gangwar, a bouncer was gunned down in the Saketri area of Panchkula on Monday. The killing is being linked to the gang of Nabha jailbreak gangster Vicky Gounder. In a post on his Facebook page – the first ever after he escaped from Nabha jail — on Sunday evening, he purportedly wrote that he had no role in the Banur and Sarawan Bodla dacoities and police were “deliberately slapping false cases on me”. He further wrote in Punjabi dialect with English letters, “Whatever we do, we do it to settle personal enmity. What we will do ourselves, everyone will come to know of that on their own,” he further wrote in a Punjabi dialect with English alphabets.

A Punjab police officer said the police were verifying whether the gang war was linked to the Gounder gang. The Punjab police seemed baffled by this spurt in crime and the perpetrators behind them as they were in many cases during the previous SAD-BJP regime. Police are still looking for leads in a robbery where six armed men robbed Rs 1.33 crore from an Axis Bank cash van on the busy Banur-Rajpur road on Tuesday morning and another robbery at the State Bank of India branch in Sarawan Bodla village of Muktsar district on Wednesday. Gounder hails from this village. Two weeks ago, the Gounder gang shot dead three members of a rival group in Gurdaspur district. Earlier, the sarpanch of a Hoshiarpur village was gunned down in Chandigarh in broad daylight by members of a Punjab gang. The same gang had shot dead a 48-year-old man at his home at Bahman Majra village in Nurpur Bedi in Ropar district days before.

“I have already issued directions to the field officers to form special anti-gangster squads to nab the gangsters. The special task force that deals with the gangsters reports to the intelligence wing and not to me,” said ADGP (Law and Order) Rohit Choudhary. SAD, which lost the election, is already describing the situation as the “worst breakdown” of law and order in the state, a charge that the Congress used to level against it just months ago.

“This is the worst law and order situation in Punjab in the last one decade. Political murders, bank dacoities, gang wars are the order of the day. Law and order is at its lowest ebb,” said SAD president Daljit Singh Cheema, who is regularly updating a list of cases categorising them as “vendetta cases”, “crime cases”, “police excesses”, “extortion cases by Punjab police” and “harassment of SAD members by Congress leaders to control constitutional bodies”. Cheema’s list contains over 30 incidents, including at least five of murders of Akali supporters, allegedly by Congressmen. “Isolated incidents did take place in our time. But, the frequency at which incidents are happening indicates it is a free for all now,” he said, adding, “Ensuring law and order should be the top priority and the chief minister, who is holding the home portfolio, is accountable for that.”

Former deputy speaker Bir Devinder Singh said people had elected Congress in the hope that law and order would improve. “But, it has worsened. If the chief minister, also the home minister, is unwell or preoccupied with something, he should give the home ministry portfolio to any other minister who can devote time,” he retorted. “Gangwars are happening in a manner as if bulls are clashing on the streets. Robbery is taking place on a busy road outside a private university and police do not act quickly to nab the robbers,” said Devinder.

Admitting that gangs were a cause of concern, a senior police officer, on condition of anonymity, said, “But police are on the job to nab gangsters. And, a number of those who carried out the Nabha jailbreak and who provided the support have been arrested as well. I think it is not right to blame the government which took over merely 45 days back. As far as vendetta cases are concerned, police are acting as per law and everything is being done to arrest whosoever is involved.”

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