Rise of the gangs of Punjab

Read | From Punjab jails, FB posts: ‘I killed Rocky

The credit war among rival gangs to claim responsibility of killing of ‘Rocky’ speaks volumes of the fact that rival gangs do not want to leave any stone unturned to scale higher peaks in the world of crime.

Read | But I’m only one out of Punjab jail, says ‘key suspect’ Jaipal

Once an associate of Dimpy, later accused in his murder, Rocky was acquitted in the case and had gone on to contest 2012 assembly polls from Fazilka as an Independent candidate.

Police say he was no longer involved in criminal activities but his past had apparenetly come to haunt him.

Everytime a gangster is killed, a credit war plays out on social media, especially on Facebook, where gangster of Punjab upload posts with impunity, flaunting guns and issuing threats to rivals, even from jail. Their fan following on social media is huge. Jai Pal Singh, the Ferozepur-based gangster who has snubbed others for “falsely” claiming responsibility of Rocky’s murder and who takes pride in saying in the Facebook post that it is he who killed Rocky, has nearly 4,900 friends on Facebook.

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“The gangs are roping in more and more youth. They are getting into the students elections in the colleges where president is to be chosen. There have been firing incidents in the educational institutions. All this is due to gangs penetrating deep into colleges and students’ union elections,” said a Punjab Police official.

Arrests of gangsters in the past have led to seizure of sophisticated weapons from them.

“They start as small-time gangsters, meet hardcore criminals and bigger gangsters in jails and then this game of extortions, forcible eviction and possession of property in disputed cases begin. Other crimes include highway robberies. The trend is very disturbing and if the gangs are not reined in, Punjab will be another UP or Bihar. Already, the gangs of Punjab have tie-ups with gangs in Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and other states. They provide hideouts to each other,” the police official said.

Jails of Punjab, where kingpins of several gangs are lodged facing numerous cases, are turning out to be safe havens to operate their gangs from jails itself.

“The gangs are spread in all the three regions of Punjab and work independently in their respective regions. But they have mutual tie-ups regionwise also. For example, in Doaba, there is a gang of Gopi Dalewalia, an accomplice of slain gangster Sukh Kahlon, which is linked to Jaggu Bhagwanpuria gang in Majha. Both Gopi and Jaggu are in jail but their gangs continue to operate unabated,” said the official.

Sukha Kahlon was shot by members of rival gang in January 2015 even as a police party in whose custody he was looked on. His killing was apparently a reprisal for the killing of a rival gang member. Kahlon’s killing sparked a wave of sympathy for him on Facebook by his followers. Even today, several Facebook pages are dedicated to Kahlon.

Gangster Jaggu Bhagwanpuria remained a red rag for the police till his arrest in July last year. A month prior to that, a police party killed an Akali leader Mukhjit Singh Mukha “mistaking” him for Jaggu.

Jaggu took to Facebook to express sympathy with family of Mukhjit Singh, and to cock a snook at police after Mukha’s killing.

‘We are seized of the matter, will form a strategy to deal with such gangs. ‘We will definitely act to ensure that rule of law is respected,” Punjab Director General of Police Suresh Arora said.

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