Sirsa encounter: Five minutes after gangsters stopped firing, cops stormed hideout
Bunty’s family in Jaito after his cremation. Express Bunty’s family in Jaito after his cremation. Express
It took the Punjab Police team less than half an hour to enter the village hideout of three gangsters after surrounding it in early hours on Tuesday. While the entire operation, according to police, took nearly two hours — beginning with the clear identification of the hideout in Sukhera Khera village in Haryana’s Sirsa district — the decision to storm the house was taken in just five minutes after the “gangsters stopped firing”. Police later claimed that the three, who had been declared proclaimed offenders in 2014, had killed themselves after being cornered.
“Police fired a couple of rounds in air warning the gangsters to surrender. They opened retaliatory fire on police. They would appear on the roof and fire shots at police. After some time, there was silence and firing stopped from gangsters’ side. Police party then went inside the house and upstairs. Policemen found out that while two gangsters had committed suicide and the third one was battling for life due to gunshot injury,” Faridkot Senior Superintendent of Police Nanak Singh told The Indian Express Wednesday. Asked if it was strategically right for policemen to enter the house the gangsters had already fired 15 rounds, the SSP said, “It was risky, I know. But, we had no option. The policemen entered the house in offensive.”
On Tuesday, police said they had recovered a .315 bore rifle with six live cartridges, two .30 bore pistols with 85 live and 5 empty cartridges, one .32 bore revolver with 29 live and six empty cartridges, one .32 bore pistol with 24 live and four empty cartridges, a white colour Scorpio, two mobile phones and cash amounting to Rs 20,000 from gangsters Kamaljit Singh Bunty, Jaspreet Singh Jumpy and Nishan Singh. While Kamaljit and Jaspreet were found dead under suspicious circumstances, Nishan Singh had a gunshot injury on chest and police said he died as he was rushed to the hospital for treatment.
Police, which maintain that the gangsters shot themselves dead, said one of the gangsters shot Nishan before committing suicide. “Jumpy was very daring. He was associated with (killed sharp shooter) Devinder Bambiha’s gang. It was Bambiha who named Jumpy as Jumpy Don. I cannot believe he can commit suicide. Had they run out of ammunition, one could understand that they might have committed suicide. But, it is police which is saying that large cache of arms and ammunition was recovered from them,” said Sukhchain Singh, Jumpy’s uncle, after the slain gangster’s cremation at his village Rori Kapura near Jaito in Faridkot district on Wednesday.
Jumpy’s cousin, Chamkaur, said that Jumpy, who was born in 1995 and was the only son of his parents, had lost his mother when he was four and later his father in 2001. “He was very timid until one day a policeman beat him up brutally for no reason. Then he changed,” said Chamkaur, adding that Jumpy lost touch with family after March 2013.
Meanwhile, Dr Deepak Kamboj, who headed the panel of doctors that performed post-mortem in Haryana, said that Bunty and Jumpy had bullets entering their bodies from the right “ear lobule region”. He added that bullet had hit Nishan on the right side of his chest. The doctor added said there was only one gunshot injury to each of the three bodies.
In Himmatpura Basti in Jaito, Bunty’s family returned to their home after three years. Bunty’s father, Gurjeet Singh, said, “We left the house about three years back and had been staying in Dabwali. We had to leave the house as police used to take me away for questioning every now and then when Bunty was absconding. Now, since he is no more, we have come back. I am thinking to sell the house and live somewhere else in Punjab,” said Gurjeet, a denter and painter by profession.
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