CHANDIGARH: Punjab Police have arrested seven accused, including three most wanted gangsters, in a spate of heinous crimes after an over two-month long, 1,500-km chase spread over four states, the state police chief said on Monday.
Director General of Police Dinkar Gupta said the gangster trio were arrested from Sojat in Rajasthan's Pali district after a tip-off of the local police.
The trio -- Harman Bhullar, Balraj Singh and Harwinder Sandhu, members of a gang led by US-based Pavittar Singh -- had been changing their locations and creating various fake identities while being on the run across Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The gang was involved in cases of extortion, attempt to murder, murder, rioting, etc, he said. While Bhullar was allegedly involved in eight criminal cases, Balraj Singh was wanted in 10 and Sandhu in three cases.
Coming close on the heels of the arrest of another noted gangster Buddha from Armenia, these arrests showed a large number of gangsters-criminals had moved out of Punjab, the DGP added.
The chase of criminals, which started from Amritsar on January 28, culminated on March 1 as a result of the perfect inter-state coordination and cooperation of the four states, he said.
Finally, after one of the longest chases covering a distance of over 1,500 km, they were arrested with the help of Rajasthan Police.
The breakthrough regarding their movement came when Ranbir Singh was admitted to the PGI in Chandigarh on February 23 after having accidentally shooting himself with a country-made weapon. The subsequent investigations led to revelation of the weapon being provided by Bhullar and his associates through Harry Bajwa of Chandigarh.
Bajwa, who provided a house to the accused in Chandigarh where they stayed two months, has also been arrested.
The arrest of the three criminals further led to arrest of two of their associates -- Gurpreet Singh and Gurwinder Singh -- from Uttarakhand from Monday.