A 28-year-old youth, wanted for murder, kidnapping, robbery, etc. is now dead. From dodging Punjab police to posting messages on Facebook, Harjinder Singh Bhullar alias Vicky Gounder during his life as a gangster had made many headlines.

Even his encounter made Punjab’s Chief Minister Captain Amamrinder Singh tweet a congratulatory message for the state police; “Congratulations to Punjab Police for killing most wanted gangster Vicky Gounder and his aide Prema Lahoria. Excellent work by DGP Suresh Arora, DG Intelligence Dinkar Gupta and OCCU team, including AIG Gurmeet Singh and Inspector Vikram Brar. Proud of you boys”.

Congratulations to Punjab Police for killing most wanted gangster Vicky Gounder and his aide Prema Lahoria. Excellent work by DGP Suresh Arora, DG Intelligence Dinkar Gupta and OCCU team, including AIG Gurmeet Singh and Inspector Vikram Brar. Proud of you boys.

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— Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) January 26, 2018

Gounder’s ‘ticket to fame’ was the audacious video of him dancing over the dead body of his rival Sukha Kahlwan, whom he killed in police custody when Kahlwan was being taken to a court in Punjab.

A social media icon for many misled youths in Punjab, Gounder was very active on the Facebook, where he constantly uploaded videos’, message of his ‘bravery’ and his unrelenting Punjabi ‘pride’.

Another example of his social media presence, while being incarcerated at Nabha Jail in Punjab for the murder of gangster Kahlwan, he had celebrated the death of another criminal Jaswinder Singh Rocky by sharing a video on Facebook.

Gounder was a co-accused in the murder of gangster Jaswinder Singh Rocky, who was gunned down near the tourist resort of Timber Trail in Himachal Pradesh’s Parwanoo town on National Highway 22 on 30 April 2016.

Vicky Gounder, who was a native of Sarawan Bodla village of Muktsar, was a gold medallist discus thrower at national level before he began his criminal life.

He had joined a gang formed by another history-sheeter, Jaipal Singh of Ferozepur and rose to fame after his brazen attacks on his rival gang.

Gounder has not always evaded the law, he was arrested from Ropar in December 2015 and was lodged in Nabha jail but escaped the high security prison along with six inmates in November 2016 .

But after escaping the prison, he again launched attacks on his rivals. In April 2017, he allegedly shot dead three members of a rival gang in Gurdaspur as he became active in Punjab’s Majha region.

However, on 26 January, the Crime Control Unit of the Punjab Police finally caught on to him. He was gunned down along with his his aide Prema Lahoria in an encounter at a village on the Punjab-Rajasthan border.