A speeding car with police in hot pursuit, a crash and finally gunshots that injured and landed notorious gangster Dilpreet Singh Dhahan, alias Baba, in the police net near the Sector 43 Inter State Bus Terminus (ISBT) on Monday had all the ingredients of a Bollywood potboiler.
A team of 60 policemen of the Punjab state special operation cell (SSOC) arrested the gangster after hitting his car and retaliating after he fired at them near the ISBT.
However, the man who was involved in the murder of a sarpanch and had shot at and injured singer Parmish Verma in Mohali in April could have been arrested earlier had the Chandigarh Police paid heed to a tip-off by Punjab police inspector Parminder Singh Bajwa.
The gangster had been spotted having a meal at the ISBT, also in April, Bajwa had informed the media then. It was right next to the spot where the encounter took place.
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Controversial policeman Bajwa was in the news earlier when he, as the then Shahkot police station house officer, had registered a case of illegal mining against the city’s assembly bypoll candidate.
In April this year, he claimed seeing Dilpreet at a restaurant at the ISBT and even alerted the Chandigarh Police special operations cell and the UT crime branch. However, the police did not pay heed to the tip-off even though a report with the information was submitted to the UT SSP by the deputy superintendent of police (operation cell) Jaswinder Singh.
The operation
{{/usCountry}}The operation
{{/usCountry}}On Monday, Dilpreet was driving a white Swift Dzire with a Haryana registration plate when he was apprehended by the police at about 12 noon.
“Once he got aware of the police presence, he tried to reverse his car from the spot but in vain as the team was successful in rattling him,” said deputy superintendent of police(DSP) Tajender Singh of SSOC. The entire operation began after 12 pm on the road behind the ISBT.
The entire area was cordoned off after the encounter by the Punjab Police as quick reaction teams with guns were deployed outside the district court complex. Additional forces of UT traffic cops and police personnel were called to divert traffic from the bus stand.
Curious onlookers, many of them on their way to the ISBT to board buses going out of town, gathered at the spot, with some even trying to enter the crime scene before being shooed away. “It looks like a sequence from a Bollywood movie. The windowpanes of the car are broken on both sides. There’s a pistol lying on the road, there’s blood,” said Sidharath, on his way to Shimla.
The entire operation lasted for over three hours after which UT senior superintendent of police (SSP) Nilambari Jagdale, superintendent of police (SP) operations Ravi Kumar and deputy superintendent of police (DSP) crime branch Amrao Singh took stock of the situation.
A senior UT police official present on the spot said: “There was delay in checking of the vehicle that was used by the gangster as the Chandigarh forensic team took more than an hour to arrive. The team members were having lunch.”