‘We could not believe our area would be a hideout of criminals’
NEWDELHI: Fear gripped locals in Fatehpur Beri’s Chandan Hola village as the sound of bullets rattled the neighbourhood on Saturday afternoon.
A heavy police presence ensured the locality remained cordoned off till late evening as forensic teams swarmed the neighbourhood.
Mohammed Danish, a local, said he initially thought someone was bursting crackers. “When I got out of my house, I saw the heavy movement of police vans towards the direction of the encounter site. We first thought it was a terrorist attack. Later, we came to know through television about the encounter,” Danish said, expressing surprise that the area was inhabited by such wanted gangsters.
He said the cops kept repeatedly telling them to keep away from the encounter site.
Danish, who owns a small business, said the incident sparked panic among the residents.
“The area is largely inhabited by farmhouse owners, but there are also many servant quarters and small residential settle- ments in the vicinity,” Danish said.
Brij Kumar, a security guard at one of the farmhouses, said the police cordoned off entire area. “I was to report on duty by 2 pm. There is only one approach road. We are not being allowed to pass through. We did not have a fair idea of what had happened,” Kumar said.
A number of residents tried to swarm the area just to see the encounter site and police in action.
Arish, a college student, had come from a nearby village after seeing the encounter details on TV. “We came to see the gangsters. We saw ambulances rushing bodies out of this place. Dog squads arrived on the spot,” he said.
Many others who used the route for their daily commute said it was surprising to see a gun battle in the area.
“I pass through this area often. When I learnt about the encounter that left four killed, and six policemen injured, I was shocked. We could not believe our neighbourhood would turn out to be a criminals’ hideout. And that too of such wanted gangsters,” said Ravi Sehra, a resident of Nanda in Chhatarpur. Delhi Police on Saturday gunned down one of Delhi’s most wanted criminals. HT takes a look at other similar encounters cell gunned down a wanted member of the Mewati gang and arrested three others in Pitampura. Four policemen were injured in the operation that lasted for about an hour.
One man was shot dead and another was injured after a Delhi Police crime branch team forced their way in to a house in Sahibabad to rescue a 5-year-old boy. The boy was abducted from his school bus on January 25, despite the heightened security arrangements and police deployment in place for the Republic Day celebrations.
A man wanted in several cases was killed inside a restaurant in Central Delhi's New Rajender Nagar. Identified as Manoj Vashishtha, police said that the man was wanted in several cases of crime. He was shot in by a team of the special cell of Delhi Police. In an encounter, Delhi Police’s special
Two suspected militants of Indian Mujahideen were killed, while one managed to escape, as police teams forced their way into a Batla House flat in southeast Delhi after a specific tip-off. A Delhi Police inspector, who was leading the team, was killed.
The special cell of the Delhi Police had gunned down five men in an encounter on May 6, 2006, near the Sonia Vihar Water Treatment Plant in Khajuri Khas. The killed men were believed to be members of a criminal gang active in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.