Who Is Gurpreet Singh Sekhon, Nabha Jailbreak ‘Mastermind' Bhagwant Mann Just Welcomed Into AAP

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: Gurpreet Singh Sekhon, welcomed into AAP by CM Bhagwant Mann, was named by Punjab Police as the mastermind of the 2016 Nabha jailbreak. Here’s his full criminal record: 47 cases, the Vicky Gounder years, and the jail escape itself.

North Desk Correspondent

Chandigarh, September 8

When Bhagwant Mann placed a siropa around Gurpreet Singh Sekhon’s shoulders at a rally in Zira on Sunday, he was welcoming into the Aam Aadmi Party a man whose police file runs to 47 registered criminal cases — and whose name Punjab Police once attached to one of the most audacious jail escapes in the state’s history, not as a footnote, but as its architect.

Here is the full trail.

2007: The first case

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon’s police record begins in 2007, when he was booked under the Arms  Act. He came from a family with no shortage of resources: the Sekhons of Mudki village in Ferozepur were an affluent landowning family with roughly 45 acres and brick-kiln interests. The gangster trajectory that followed was not one of desperation; it built on the Arms Act case, drawing him into the Jaipal gang before he split off to run his own outfit.

The Vicky Gounder years

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: Gurpreet Singh Sekhon became closely associated with Harjinder Singh alias Vicky Gounder, one of Punjab’s most wanted gangsters at the time. In March 2015, Sekhon was arrested in connection with a murder case. Weeks later, gangster Sukhvir Singh alias Sukha Kahlwan was shot dead while being moved in police custody, and Gurpreet Singh Sekhon’s name figured among those accused, alongside his Gounder links. A Kapurthala court would eventually acquit all eight accused, including Gurpreet Singh Sekhon, in February 2019, citing insufficient evidence. By this point, police records already listed him as facing 13 cases of murder and attempt to murder.

November 27, 2016: The Nabha jailbreak

This is the case that made Gurpreet Singh Sekhon a household name in Punjab crime reporting, and Punjab Police’s own account of what happened puts him at the centre of it, not the periphery.

On the morning of November 27, 2016, a group of armed men — several dressed as policemen — stormed the high-security Nabha Central Jail in Patiala district. In minutes, gunfire and coordinated logistics overwhelmed jail staff, and six inmates walked out: Khalistan Liberation Force chief Harminder Singh Mintoo, fellow militant Kashmir Singh Galwandi, and gangsters Vicky Gounder, Kulpreet Singh alias Neeta Deol, Amandeep Singh Dhotian — and Gurpreet Singh Sekhon.

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: According to Punjab Police’s counter-intelligence wing, the operation wasn’t a chaotic mob assault — it was planned. Investigators later said Gurpreet Singh Sekhon’s cousin, Manvir Singh Sekhon, had conducted a reconnaissance of the jail using a pen camera and mapped the escape route in advance. On the day itself, police said, Gurpreet Singh Sekhon was firing from inside the jail while Manvir’s team fired roughly 200 rounds in five minutes from outside to force the escape. The plot, police said, had been finalised at an accomplice’s house in Moga district’s Mangewal village.

Then-AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal called the episode a “complete breakdown of law and order” in Punjab at the time. Mann, not yet chief minister, went further — alleging the jailbreak had actually been engineered as an attempt to get him and Kejriwal killed. It is against that backdrop that Mann, now CM, chose to personally welcome one of the escapees into his party a decade later.

February 2017: The arrest

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: Gurpreet Singh Sekhon evaded capture for nearly three months. On February 12, 2017, a joint operation by Punjab’s counter-intelligence wing and the Patiala and Moga police tracked him to a hideout in Dhudike village, Moga — a house reportedly owned by an NRI. After a two-hour operation involving mobile jammers and a full village lockdown, Gurpreet Singh Sekhon was arrested along with three associates, including his cousin Manvir. Police recovered four firearms, including two .32 bore revolvers, from the group.

March 2023: Conviction

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: More than six years after his arrest, a Patiala court convicted 22 of the 28 accused in the jailbreak case in March 2023. Gurpreet Singh Sekhon was among those sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment, convicted under IPC provisions covering armed dacoity, attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy, along with Arms Act charges. The UAPA terrorism charges initially invoked in the case did not survive at the trial court stage.

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November 2023 to present: Bail, and reinvention

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: Gurpreet Singh Sekhon secured bail in November 2023 while his appeal against the conviction remains pending in the Punjab and Haryana High Court — meaning he is not, at this moment, a serving convict.

It’s in this bail period that Gurpreet Singh Sekhon’s public reinvention as a “social worker” took shape: arranging marriages for girls from poor families, contributing to road construction, and distributing ration and cattle feed during last year’s floods, according to his supporters. His political weight showed up first in the 2025 rural local-body elections, when two women from his family won Zila Parishad seats — backed, notably, by the Shiromani Akali Dal, not AAP. He went on to campaign for AAP’s nominees in Nagar Panchayat elections in Mudki and Mamdot before Sunday’s formal induction, at a rally that, by PTI’s account, Gurpreet Singh Sekhon himself organised.

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: The irony Mann didn’t address

Gurpreet Singh Sekhon & AAP: At Sunday’s rally, Mann defended the induction without directly engaging Gurpreet Singh Sekhon’s record: “Circumstances may sometimes compel a person to take certain decisions, but when someone chooses the right path and dedicates himself to public service, people accept and support him.” In the same speech, he cited his government’s Anti-Gangster Task Force numbers: 2,858 gangsters arrested, 1,105 gangs dismantled — and accused past governments of letting gangsterism take root in Punjab.

Whether Gurpreet Singh Sekhon’s reform is genuine is a separate question from whether AAP’s own past rhetoric about the Nabha jailbreak survives this induction intact. On that count, the party’s 2016 statements and Sunday’s stage-managed welcome sit uneasily next to each other.

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