CHANDIGARH: The long arms of law have finally reached the controversial Punjab police Inspector Gurmeet Singh Pinky, a former terrorist and police ‘cat’ who had murdered a Ludhiana Youth in 2001.  He had killed many militants during height of militancy in Punjab and has remained blue eyed boy of top police brass.

The district and session judge Jagadhri at Yamuna Nagar in Haryana on Tuesday sentenced Pinky to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs.one lakh to be paid as compensation to the family of deceased Avtar
Singh Gola. He has also been sentenced for three years imprisonment and fined for Rs.10,000. He would undergo his jail term in Ludhiana central jail.
 
Pinky is incidentally the first known police cat who have been convicted for murder. Even as Pinky has been convicted, his five accomplices — Ravinder Pal Bittu, Pawan Kumar, Parveen Kumar, Paramjeet Pammi and Jaswant Singh Punnu dairy wala — walked scot free.
They were accused of killing Gola after a minor altercation on January 8,2001.

Pinky has a notorious past. He had enjoyed proximity with a large section of terrorists in Punjab and traded information with the Punjab Police. After he was exposed in militant ranks in the early nineties he became a 'cat'. It is said that, so true was the information passed on by Pinky, that he soon became an important tool for the police to fight terrorism. 

He became a core member of DGP S S Virk’s team which was comprised of officers like Sumedh Saini and Shive Kumar Verma presently Senior Superintendent of Fatehgarh Sahib.  Pinky was last posted as Inspector
CIA staff at Fatehgarh Sahib due to his proximity with the SSP. He was not suspended despite his conviction by court.

Pinky’s information led to some successful encounters and the arrest of some terrorists which earned him a permanent place in the police. In the mid nineties Pinky was inducted in the police as a Havaldar from where he rose to the present post of Inspector.

Pinky is one of about 200 surviving police cats, most of them are living with fake identities.  A senior police officer said that these cats have been shown dead in the police records. DGP Punjab who has publicly admitted presence of police cats in Punjab has maintained that this was done under the centre government policy of  Rehabilitating the terrorists who had helped police to eliminate militancy.

The system of police cats was first introduced in Punjab by ADGP Mohammed Izhar Alam in early eighties when he was SSP at Amritsar. The cats allegedly recruited by Alam were popularly known as “Alam Sena”.

They were either members of terrorist victim families or hard core criminals who were working for money. Subsequently, former DGP’s J.F. Rebeiro  and  K.P.S. Gill widely used the cats in counter insurgency
operations.

One such cat, a former terrorist Sukhwinder Singh alias Sukhi was recently exposed by media. He was living under fake identity and still using his influence in police to settle land disputes. He is also accused of indulging in land grabbing cases.  

According to police sources about half a dozen police cats have been absorbed in Punjab police after militancy was over.