Police mimic gun to catch suspect

Move came after pistol got jammed during encounter with armed criminals

Quick-thinking police officers in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, mimicked the sound of gunshots to scare away suspects, after their firearm suddenly got jammed during an encounter.

The criminals were eventually apprehended.

The incident took the Sambhal district Pradesh on Friday.

Reports said two suspects were fleeing after committing a crime, when policemen chased them.

Returning fire

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The fleeing pair were wanted on charges of snatching and robbery. While police managed to arrest one of them, his accomplice hid inside a sugar cane field and began firing at the police, leading to an encounter.

Officers surrounded the field and began returning fire.

However, a peculiar situation arose when a pistol that was being used by one of the officers jammed.

Without wasting time, the ingenious cops then began shouting “thain, thain” (mimicking gun sounds) and “maro, maro” (kill him, kill him), to put pressure on the criminal hiding inside the sugar cane field. Eventually, they were able to catch him.

The incident was caught on camera and was later shared on social media.

“The revolver got stuck during the encounter and so the officers began mimicking gun sounds to put pressure on the criminal. In between, they got the time to [make] the revolver [work again],” Sambhal district superintendent of police Yamuna Prasad told Gulf News by phone yesterday.

“He said the mimicking is a normal process in such a situation. The cops are trained to do that at the time of emergency to use this period to get the firearms functional or at least put pressure on the targets,” he explained.

In this case, though, firearm functioned again, added.

Another senior police official gave a similar explanation.

“Words like ‘maro’ (kill) and ‘ghero’ (nab him) are said to create mental pressures on the criminals,” Sambhal’s additional superintendent of police Pankaj Kumar Pandey Kumar Pandey told news agency ANI.

He added that cartridges being stuck in the revolver was a technical fault. the he