KOLKATA/LUDHIANA: A team of Bengal cops gunned down two Punjab gangsters — including its most-wanted drug smuggler Jaipal Singh Bhullar — who were on the run since May 15 after murdering two policemen in Ludhiana’s Jagraon, in a shootout that shook the usually calm precincts of a plush residential complex in New Town on Wednesday evening.
Bhullar (39) and his accomplice Jaspreet Singh aka Jassi (34) had been staying in a second-floor rented flat in Shukhobrishti (locally known as Shapoorji complex, after the developers), in Action Area III.
A team of Bengal STF officers knocked on their door, asking them to give up but they refused to surrender and fired a volley of shots, injuring an officer.
The cops fired back, killing the duo.
Bhullar, who hailed from Ferozepur, had a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head, and Jassi, from Kharar in Mohali district, Rs 5 lakh.
Two of their accomplices — Baljinder Singh alias Babbi of Malla Khurd (Moga), and Darshan Singh of Sahauli (Ludhiana) — were arrested from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh on May 28.
The four gangsters, who used to smuggle drugs from Pakistan, had shot dead two ASIs, Bhagwan Singh and Dalwinderjit Singh, in Jagraon’s grain market and were booked for the murders.
According to sources, a team of officers first conducted a recce of the complex — which, with its 12,000 flats spread over 400 acres, is one of the largest in New Town — around 1pm.
Around 3pm, a team of plainclothes officers took up position outside eight buildings surrounding B-153 — the building where the gangsters had been staying — and the operation began at 3.30pm.
“We wanted to arrest them and knocked on the second-floor flat (number 201) and asked them to surrender.
But they opened fire at us, in which one of our officers suffered injuries.
We fired at them in self-defence in which they were killed,” said Vineet Goyal, ADG (STF), West Bengal.
A photograph later released by the cops showed the duo, wearing shorts, lying dead inside the flat.
While Jassi was found in a pool of blood on the floor, Bhullar was seen resting against a wall.
According to sources, the STF were receiving real-time inputs from the Punjab Police.
Shortly after the encounter, a team of Punjab cops flew into Kolkata, even as the CID took charge of the investigation.
Inspector Kartik Mohan Ghosh (50), who was injured in his left shoulder and waist, is being treated in hospital.
Punjab director-general of police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta, addressing a press conference in Chandigarh in the evening, said Punjab Police had launched a massive operation — codenamed OP-Jack manhunt — after the murder of the two ASIs and had got the exact location of Jaipal and Jassi after a close associate of the two gangsters, Bharat Kumar of Ludhiana’s Sahnewal area, was arrested near Shambhu Border in Rajpura.
The cops had seized a .30-bore pistol and a car bearing a Bengal registration number.
Kumar had revealed that Jaipal and Jassi were holed up in a rented apartment in Kolkata.
The DGP also publicly thanked the Bengal cops for acting immediately on the information.
Goyal said they had found five 9mm pistols, 89 rounds of ammunitions and Rs 7 lakh in cash from the flat.
“The CID and bomb detection and disposal squad is enquiring further.
Since they were dreaded criminals, they are scanning the entire building for any further sign of arms and explosives,” he added.
Goyal said the Bengal cops had been sharing intelligence with Punjab Police about the duo for quite some time, but they could zero in on their exact whereabouts only after Bharat Kumar’s arrest.
It was after this that they conducted the raid.