Vibhuti Khand shootout main accused killed in encounter
LUCKNOW : Girdhari Sharma alias Kanhaiya Vishwakarma, the main accused in the murder of gangster Ajit Singh, was killed in an encounter with police here on Monday, officials said. Sharma, who is said to be a close aide of a former MP of east Uttar Pradesh, was gunned down when he tried to escape from police custody in Vibhuti Khand area during the wee hours of Monday, said Lucknow commissioner of police (CP) Dhruv Kant Thakur. Another senior police official, privy to the investigation, said Sharma had over 23 criminal cases against him and carried a reward of ₹1 lakh on his head.
LUCKNOW: Girdhari Sharma alias Kanhaiya Vishwakarma, the main accused in the murder of gangster Ajit Singh, was killed in an encounter with police here on Monday, officials said.
Sharma, who is said to be a close aide of a former MP of east Uttar Pradesh, was gunned down when he tried to escape from police custody in Vibhuti Khand area during the wee hours of Monday, said Lucknow commissioner of police (CP) Dhruv Kant Thakur.
Another senior police official, privy to the investigation, said Sharma had over 23 criminal cases against him and carried a reward of ₹1 lakh on his head.
He was arrested in Delhi on January 10 after his role surfaced in the sensational shootout in which mafioso-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s henchman Ajit Singh was killed in Vibhuti Khand area here on January 6.
Sharma was brought to Lucknow from Delhi on Thursday and was in police custody since Saturday morning.
He was the key person who could establish the role of the former MP in the Vibhuti Khand shootout, but was reluctant to answer questions from investigators, the official said.
According to police, Sharma was taken to the shootout site by a police team to recover the weapon used by him in the murder of Ajit Singh.
“The team reached the spot at around 2:30 am. When Sharma was asked to come down from the vehicle, he hit a sub-inspector with his head, snatched his pistol and ran into the nearby shrubs. When our team surrounded him, he opened fire in which a police personnel was injured while a bullet hit the bullet proof jacket of inspector, Vibhuti Khand police staion,” said the officer.
The police team returned fire on Sharma, in which he was severely injured. “Sharma was rushed to the nearby Lohia hospital where he succumbed to his injuries during treatment,” said the officer.
“Before his arrest by Delhi police, Sharma was on the run for the last eight years and had committed multiple murders during this period. He was also wanted in the murder of a 32-year-old contractor Nitesh Singh alias Bablu, who was shot dead in full public view on Sadar tehsil premises, under the Cantonment police station area of Varanasi, on September 30, 2019,” the official said.