A man accused of attacking a policewoman on a train in Ayodhya last month was gunned down and his two accomplices were injured in an encounter with the police, a senior official said on Friday.
Special DG, law and order, Prashant Kumar told PTI, “Anish, the prime accused in the case of attack on a woman constable on board the Saryu Express, was injured in an encounter with police in Pura Kalandar, Ayodhya. He later succumbed to injuries.”
“His two aides — Azad and Vishambhar Dayal Dubey — were also injured and are under arrest,” the officer added.
The woman constable was found injured in a compartment of Saryu Express on August 30. She has been admitted to the King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow since.
She is under medical observation and her condition is said to be stable, hospital sources said.
Additional Director General (Railways) J N Singh told PTI, “The accused attacked the woman constable with an intention to rob her. It appears that they attacked her when she resisted.” An STF official said the woman constable was in police uniform and was alone in the coach at the time of the incident.
According to a statement issued by the Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh Police, a team tried to arrest Anish on Thursday night after identifying him as the main accused of the incident.
The STF team along with local police surrounded him near a road crossing in Inayat Nagar area of Ayodhya. “The accused along with his aides opened fire on the police team. Anish managed to flee from the spot while his aides Azad and Vishambhar were arrested. The duo sustained injuries in the retaliatory firing and were rushed to hospital,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, other teams began tracking Anish and surrounded him in the Pura Kalandar police station area, a few hours later. “Anish was surrounded and asked to surrender but he opened fire on the police team. He was injured in retaliatory firing from the police side and rushed to hospital where he succumbed to injuries,” it said.
While Anish and Azad are residents of Ayodhya, Vishambhar is a native of Sultanpur district. The trio have several cases lodged against them at various police stations of Ayodhya. The accused travelled on passenger trains in the area and committed crimes like theft.
“The arrested accused informed us that they along with Anish used to commit crime in trains. On finding the woman constable alone in a coach, they attacked and injured her severely. The accused then alighted from the train while it was approaching Ayodhya Cantt railway station,” the statement said.
A case was registered with the Government Railway Police (GRP) in Ayodhya on August 30.
The STF, along with local police and GRP, were pressed in to identify and arrest the accused in the case after the Allahabad High Court took suo motu cognisance of the incident. The UP Police had recently said that they had gunned down 183 alleged criminals in encounters in the six years of Yogi Adityanath’s government and this included gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad’s son Asad and his accomplice, who were killed in an exchange of fire in Jhansi.
The UP Police data showed that more than 10,900 encounters have taken place in the state since March 2017, when Adityanath took over as the chief minister of the state for the first time.
In these encounters, 23,300 alleged criminals were arrested and 5,046 injured. As many as 13 policemen also died in these gunfights while 1,443 personnel were injured, the data showed.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI)