Court holds 28 guilty in Nabha jailbreak case

Tribune News Service

Aman Sood

Patiala, March 21

A local court today held 28 accused, including over a dozen gangsters, guilty in the 2016 Nabha jailbreak case. Four alleged gangsters and two terrorists had escaped from the maximum security jail at Nabha after gangsters dressed in police uniform had fired indiscriminately at jail guards.

Additional Sessions Judge HS Grewal will announce the quantum of sentence on March 23. The police had filed a chargesheet against 34 accused in 2017 in the case.

One of the escaped inmates, Vicky Gounder, and his accomplice Prema Lahoriya were killed in an encounter with the Punjab Police at a village in Sriganganagar district in January 2018.

The investigating agency, Organised Crime Control Unit, and the district police travelled the length and breadth of the country to make arrests in the case.

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon, Neeta Deol and Amandeep Dhotian, who had escaped from the prison, were later arrested, and 25 others have been held guilty.

Armed gangsters, many of them dressed as cops, had attacked the jail and had taken just a few minutes to execute their plan even as the jail officials failed to retaliate.

The jailbreak had put a serious question mark over the law and order situation in the state as the police top brass and the Prisons Department “ignored an internal security review and suggestions that clearly indicated a desperate attempt to free Khalistani terrorists”, according to a report.

Gounder was killed in 2018

• Kashmir Singh Galwandi, KLF chief Harminder Singh Mintoo and four gangsters had fled the Nabha jail on November 27, 2016
• Mintoo, arrested again, died of a cardiac arrest in jail in April 2018, while Vicky Gounder was killed in a police encounter in January 2018. Gurpreet Singh Sekhon, Neeta Deol and Amandeep Dhotian are in the custody
• Of the six escapees, Kashmir Singh is yet to be arrested
• Officials say it is difficult to trace him as he has gone underground and is not using any gadget

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