Punjab Police informer-turned-dismissed cop Gurmeet Singh Pinky dead

Controversial inspector, who was stripped of gallantry award after being convicted of murder, was suffering from dengue and hospitalised in Chandigarh, where he died of cardiac arrest

Controversial Punjab Police officer Gurmeet Singh Pinky died after a heart attack in Chandigarh on Wednesday.

Controversial Punjab Police officer Gurmeet Singh Pinky, who died after a heart attack in Chandigarh on Wednesday. (HT file photo)

Police sources said that Pinky, a former police cat or militant sympathiser who later became an informer helping hunt down terrorists, was suffering from dengue and had been admitted to a private hospital in Chandigarh, where he suffered a cardiac arrest and died on Wednesday morning.

Pinky was close to militants in the 1980s, but in the early ’90s, he turned a police informer and was made a commando. He caught Khalistani militant Jagtar Singh Hawara on two occasions and was given the gallantry award in 1997 for his role in fighting militancy.

He rose to the rank of inspector and was known for his proximity to senior police officials. He worked closely with Sumedh Singh Saini during his tenure as the Ludhiana senior superintendent of police. However, of late he had been critical of Saini, who went on to become the Punjab Police chief and is embroiled in the Kotkapura police firing case of 2015.

Pinky was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 for the murder of Avtar Singh Gola in Ludhiana in 2001. Subsequently, he was dismissed from service.

He was, however, released by the Punjab government on May 24, 2014, and was reinstated as inspector on May 16, 2015. Before the contentious decision could snowball into a political controversy, his re-appointment was set aside. He was stripped of his gallantry award in 2015 when the central government is believed to have learned of his conviction.