Lucknow, Aug. 24: An Uttar Pradesh sub-inspector was killed and another injured during a 20-hour gun battle with a dreaded gang in the bandit-infested Budelkhand region that borders Madhya Pradesh.
Gang leader Babuli Kol is believed to have escaped but four of his accomplices have been caught in the operation that is still continuing in the area under the Patha forest range of Manikpur in the Chitrakoot district of Uttar Pradesh, police sources said.
Anand Kumar, additional director-general of police said, in Lucknow this evening that although the firing had stopped, a massive search exercise was still going on in the inhospitable terrain. "Our sub-inspector J.P. Singh sustained a fatal bullet injury. Virendra Tripathi, another of our sub-inspectors, has suffered injuries and has been admitted to the Manikpur primary health centre. The operation is still going on," Kumar said.
Babuli, who carries a bounty of Rs 5 lakh on his head, first shot into prominence in 2012 when he and his newly recruited gang members started demanding cash and grain from the villagers in the area, declaring himself the "only master" of the Patha forests.
The 35-year-old, who hails from the district and dropped out of school in Class XI to initially start farming, was arrested 2007 for helping Ambika Patel alias Thokia, a dreaded dacoit at the time. Babuli spent six months in jail and after his release, blamed the police for falsely implicating him in the case.
Babuli is said to have met Lale Patel, a friend of Thokia, in jail and expressed his wish to join the gang. Babuli had snatched Lale in 2008 from police custody while he was being to court in Karvi, the district headquarters of Chitrakoot around 250km from Lucknow, for a hearing. But Thokia and Lale were shot dead in a gunfight with the police later that year.
In her fourth term as Uttar Pradesh chief minister from 2007 to 2012, Mayawati had tried to rid the area of dacoits. Bandits Shiv Kumar Patel alias Dadua were gunned down in July 2007, Thokia in August 2008 and Ghanshyam Kewat in June 2009.
