Dimpy Chandbhan to Gurpreet Sekhon: Punjab’s gangsters keep finding their way into politics

Dimpy Chandbhan to Gurpreet Sekhon: Punjab’s gangsters keep finding their way into politics

Gurpreet Sekhon's induction into the AAP marks a shift from the family's Congress roots and comes months after he was arrested during the zila parishad polls

Gangster-turned-politician Gurpreet Singh Sekhon formally joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday, becoming the latest in a long line of Punjab's underworld figures to cross over into mainstream politics.

None, however, has won an election to become a member of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha.

Sekhon, who hails from Mudki village in Ferozepur district, comes from a family with Congress roots, though various political parties had approached him as his own political influence grew before his shift to the AAP.

Sekhon had already tested the electoral waters through his family — his two wives, Mandeep Kaur Sekhon and Kuljeet Kaur Sekhon, had earlier won the zila parishad elections from the Bazidpur and Ferozeshah zones with the backing of the SAD.

Sekhon's induction into the AAP marks a shift from the family's Congress roots and comes months after he was arrested during the zila parishad polls — an arrest his supporters alleged was engineered by the then-ruling dispensation to blunt his growing influence.

He was released after the High Court intervened, and the episode is said to have only strengthened the sympathy vote for his candidates.

The gangster-to-politics trail in Punjab, however, goes back much further.

Prabhjinder Singh Brar, alias Dimpy Chandbhan of Chand Bhan village in Faridkot — widely regarded as Punjab's first big don — had close links with the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), led by Simranjit Singh Mann, whose party had performed strongly in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections.

But the subsequent countermanding of elections in Punjab and a sweeping police crackdown on militancy cut short Chandbhan's political ambitions, forcing him to flee the state for Uttar Pradesh, where he built ties with the likes of Mukhtar Ansari.

He was shot dead outside Lake Club in Chandigarh in 2006.

Jaswinder Singh Bhullar, alias Rocky Fazilka, once an aide of Dimpy Chandbhan, later tried his own hand at electoral politics.

He contested the 2012 Assembly election from Fazilka as an Independent with the tacit backing of the SAD and narrowly lost to BJP's Surjit Kumar Jyani by fewer than 1,700 votes.

Rocky was gunned down near Parwanoo in Himachal Pradesh in 2016, allegedly by another gangster, Jaipal Bhullar.

His sister, Rajdeep Kaur, carried the family's political ambitions forward, contesting the 2017 Assembly election from Fazilka as an Independent after being denied a Congress ticket.

She polled more than 38,000 votes but lost. She joined the SAD in 2018 at a "pol khol" rally addressed by Sukhbir Singh Badal, receiving a siropa on the occasion.

Jaipal Bhullar himself, a most-wanted gangster with more than 40 criminal cases against him, was killed in a police encounter in Kolkata in 2021.

His father, retired Punjab Police inspector Harpal Bhullar, had at one point announced his intention to contest elections but later withdrew.

In Gurdaspur, meanwhile, Rajwinder Kaur, maternal aunt of jailed gangster Jaggu Bhagwanpuria and popularly known as "Maasi", has emerged as a formidable political force in the Dera Baba Nanak belt.

Already the chairperson of the Dera Baba Nanak Block Samiti, she has announced her intention to contest the Assembly election from the constituency.