Gounder’s aide posed as prisoner during jailbreak

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, June 11

An interrogation of Gian Kharal, an aide of gangster Vicky Gounder, has revealed that he had posed as a prisoner during the Nabha jailbreak in which six inmates fled last year.

On November 27, six armed men, five of them wearing police uniform and one of them guised as a jail inmate, had attacked the prison and freed six of their accomplices, including KLF chief Harminder Singh Mintoo and noted gangster Harjinder Singh Bhullar alias Vicky Gounder.

The attackers had used a person guised as prisoner to facilitate their passage into the complex. This part was played by Kharal, who was arrested yesterday by the Gurdaspur police.

The arrested escapees had all along claimed that the “prisoner” was named Baba. However, for the last seven months the police did not get to know who Baba was.

The police said Kharal spilled the beans only after he was subjected to sustained interrogation.

“When we interrogated him after doctors discharged him from the Civil Hospital, he revealed that the jail attackers had asked him to wear a red jacket and a cap before he was told that he would be made an undertrial,” said SSP Bhupinderjit Singh Virk.

Meanwhile, the police took Kharal to Chandigarh today to locate a member of the Gounder gang with whom he had been in touch before he was nabbed.

He has been remanded in police custody by a local court till June 16.

Kharal was recuperating in the hospital after a bullet had pierced his leg in yesterday’s encounter.