Chandigarh: Notorious gangster Ranjodh Singh, wanted in about a dozen cases of NDPS and attempt to murder, was nabbed by Punjab police from near a village of Batala town area (district Gurdaspur) after a three-hour long encounter on Saturday.
Ranjodh, about 26, had also received a bullet injury in the encounter in which about 80 rounds of fire were exchanged between him and the police while he was hiding in the sugarcane fields of village Kotla Bhoja Singh located on the Batala-Jalandhar road.
According to police, the accused Ranjodh, a resident of Mattewal village of Amritsar who, but was living in Batala city since recently, was being followed by its teams since early Saturday morning after learning that he was heading towards his home, when the incident took place.
However, when the police raided his residence in Batala around 9 am, he fled the spot firing on the police hiding himself in the fields.
The police used a drone, special commandos and bullet proof vehicles and jackets to nab the accused who had escaped into sugarcane fields of the said village, though it detained his wife and a child.
After learning about the exact spot of the hiding of the accused with the help of the drone, the police also got several houses located near it vacated. Nonetheless, the entire village by then had become a police fortress for several hours during the encounter.
Stating that the accused was nabbed after the encounter which lasted for more than three hours, the police said that it also recovered two pistols from his possession.
The inspector general (IG) of police, border range, Mohinish Chawla who oversaw the encounter, told media that the gangster had sustained a bullet injury in his right gluteal, and had been rushed to Batala civil hospital where he was said to be out of critical condition.
It may be recalled that only about two months ago, two gangsters linked with sensational murder of singer Sidhu Moosewala, were killed in a police encounter in a border village of Amritsar.
