The Sitaramdera bus terminus

Twenty-four-year-old Nilesh Singh — one of the three youths killed in the Sitaramdera police firing — was a case of mistaken identity, CID investigations reveal more than three months after the purported encounter kicked up a storm with the victim’s father claiming he was innocent.

According to an investigating officer, police confused autorickshaw driver Nilesh with one Hare Ram Singh, a henchman of fugitive gangster Akhilesh Singh, and apparently shot him dead without verifying his identity or even waiting for him to offer an explanation why he had a pistol in his hand.

In the evening of July 5, a gang of three men allegedly attacked the owner of a Sitaramdera restaurant-cum-bar, Upendra Singh, who called in the police. A gun battle ensued with the men in uniform and Upendra’s bodyguards on one side and the suspected assailants on the other side.

Nilesh, a resident of Daiguttu in Mango, and two others — Guddu Singh (26) and Vikas Ojha (22) — were killed in the encounter. The bar owner’s bodyguard, Angad Kumar Rai, was also injured.

Some witnesses, however, dubbed it a fake encounter and blamed the police of high-handedness. Nilesh’s father Ramanuj Singh, too, stood ground that his son was innocent with no criminal links whatsoever. Circumstantial evidence suggested otherwise.

East Singhbhum police claimed to have foiled a plot to kill a Jamshedpur hotelier by nabbing five members (seen in picture) of the infamous Akhilesh Singh gang from Sidhgora early on Wednesday. The five — identified as Jasbir Singh, Amarjeet Pandey, Md Wasim Ansari, Dharmendra Pradhan and Shiv Shankar Dubey — were also planning to target two others from the rival Paramjeet Singh gang. Two 9MM pistols, two magazines, 10 cartridges, a motorcycle (later found to be stolen) and six mobile phones were found on them. SSP Akhilesh Kumar Jha (seated right) said Wasim and Amarjeet were shooters and had made their way to the city from Uttar Pradesh. The other three are local residents. Acting on a tip-off, police first picked up Jasbir from Sidhgora past midnight and he spilled the beans during interrogation. Around 1.30am, a raid was conducted in illegally occupied quarters in the same area of Sidhgora police station and the others were arrested. They were holed up in the house for three-four days. Wasim and Amarjeet confessed that they had received Rs 50,000 from another member of the gang to kill the hotelier, whose name police refused to divulge. Shiv Shankar was playing their marksman. He had set them on their target when they arrived in the city earlier this week. The two other targets of the gang were Heere Singh and Shankar Munda. The duo once worked for gangster Paramjeet Singh who was killed by an Akhilesh aide in a shootout inside Ghaghidih jail in March 2008. The SSP said they were yet to ascertain why the hotelier was on the hit list. Picture by Animesh Sengupta

Three cases were registered — one on the basis of an FIR lodged by Ramanuj against the police, the restaurant owner and his men, and two others on the basis of FIRs lodged by the police and Upendra against Nilesh and the two others. Ramanuj’s FIR alleged that his son was killed at the behest of the restaurant owner and the officers in charge of Jugsalai, Parsudih and Sidhgora police stations were party to this conspiracy.

With the case getting complicated, pressure mounted on the state government from political quarters and a CID probe was ordered. Insiders revealed that though a chargesheet was yet to be filed, the investigating agency had made considerable progress in its probe.

According to the CID findings, Guddu and Vikas were indeed henchmen of Akhilesh Singh, and had made an abortive bid on the restaurant owner’s life.

A CID officer, requesting anonymity, said that there were three in the gang of assailants. When the firing started, one of them managed to escape from the spot while Guddu and Vikas were killed. Nilesh, who was waiting for passengers at the bus terminus near the bar, apparently found a pistol lying on the ground. He picked it up with the intention to hand it over to police officers. The latter, however, mistook him for Hare Ram since both were wearing yellow T-shirts.

“Without identifying Nilesh properly, one of the policemen pumped bullets into the youth’s body, killing him on the spot,” the CID officer said.

The investigating agency is, currently, waiting for the forensic report of firearms used in killing the trio. Five countrymade guns and a 9mm pistol had been recovered from the spot while two more were confiscated from Upendra. All the weapons have been sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Ranchi. Reports are awaited.

Sources in the CID said they would reach a conclusion after verifying and corroborating finding with the help of autopsy and forensic reports as well as statements of witnesses.

Speaking to The Telegraph on Wednesday, Ramanuj once again stressed that police and Upendra Singh were involved in a conspiracy and it was not a case of mistaken identity. “Police did not kill my son inadvertently. I will fight for justice till my last breath,” he said.