Lucknow, June 18: After engaging in a pitched gun battle for 50 hours, dreaded dacoit Ghanshyam Kewat was on Thursday killed in an encounter by the Uttar Pradesh police in Suruwal Rajapur village of Chitrakoot district.
The breakthrough came after Kewat tried to breakthrough the police dragnet by running into the nearby jungles after being holed up in some of the houses in the village, 280 km from here. .
As per initial reports, Kewat after breaking through the initial cordon and ducking fire from police snipers ran towards the forest but as the entire village was cordoned off by more than 500 policemen, he eventually ran into them and was shot down.
He was sprayed with bullets that killed him instantly. Although, there are no official confirmation just yet but reports claim that the police are absolutely confident that they have their man.
Teams of Special Task Force (STF), Special Operation Group (SOG), PAC and force and officers of nearby districts like Allahabad, Banda and Kaushambi took part in the operation.
Just before he was shot dead, live pictures from the scene of the encounter had showed him jumping over walls and escaping to the backside of the house he was holed up in.
Kewat’s elimination is surely a big achievement for the police as he was one of the most dreaded gangsters in the region. He carried a reward of Rs.50000 on his head, and his gang operated in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where they had committed over two dozen murders, abductions and other crimes.
The gangsters eliminated today, is said to the “residual gang” of dacoit Baccha Kewat, who was killed earlier by the police.
But the police had to pay a heavy price to end the reign of terror in the region as three days of pitched gun battle has left four cops dead and over a dozen others, including two senior officers are injured.
Three of the dead brave men are Company commander PAC Beni Madhav Singh and constables Shamim and Iqbal.
The injured include Inspector General (IG) of the PAC B K Gupta, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Banda range S K Singh, Navendra Singh and Akram of STF, Dileep Kumar Tiwari and Rajendra Singh.
–Agencies