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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
SURAT, Sept 16: Dilip Shankar Kadam, alias Dilip Maratha, was killed while in police custody by Asif Amdawadi and his associates, the police said in its explanation of the deaths of the two Chhota Rajan gangsters on the Surat-Navsari road on Wednesday night.
Amdawadi died when the Detection of Crime Bureau officials accompanying Maratha retaliated, they added. He had escaped from police custody on Monday night.
In a statement, the police said a DCB team was escorting Maratha to the city from Navsari around 8.30 pm, when Amdawadi and two others fired on them after overtaking them in a Maruti 800 near Lajpore. A bullet killed Maratha, while Amdawadi died in retaliatory police fire. His two associates, however, escaped, though Deputy Commissioner of Police M Sekar said they could have been injured, as there were blood stains in their abandoned vehicle.
While the DCB officials fired 19 rounds from their service revolvers, Asif and his associates fired 12 rounds. Maratha received three bullet injuries -- all of which passed through his body -- while Amdawadi received six shots. Two DCB constables were injured; one in the thigh and the other in the right upper arm.
Incidentally, Maratha had been in the custody of the Mahidharpura police till Wednesday evening; a full-fledged DCB team took him to Navsari, where his associates -- including Amdawadi -- were reportedly hiding. DCB PI Kaneriya was travelling in his Tata Sumo, while PSIs Hadiya, Mawani and Patel and constables Vasant Patil and Nathu Devji were with Maratha in a Maruti van.
Amdawadi was alive when spotted, Sekar admitted, claiming that he died on the way to the hospital. To allegations that the police had ignored someone's cries for help just after the shoot-out, he said, ``But anyone, even a child, could cry `bachao, bachao'.''When asked why the gangster would confront the police within 48 hours of escaping its custody, Sekar said that he may have wanted to rescue Maratha. ``In fact'', he added, ``the DCB took Maratha into custody with the sole purpose of tracking down Amdawadi.''
Interestingly, this was the first police acknowledgement of the ties between the two; so far the police had never established a link between them.
Though a number of names of builders, criminals, underworld gangsters and others have surfaced in cases registered against both Amdawadi and Maratha since their arrest, the police did not name the two as accomplices in even a single complaint. Separate complaints against the two, however, state that they were Chhota Rajan gangsters.
When asked directly if the two had been ``finished off'' by the police, the DCP said, ``I have already stated the official version. That is the truth.''
Conspicuous absence
Though Deputy Commissioner of Police M Sekar attempted to make the ``official version'' of the Maratha-Amdawadi encounter as authentic as possible, Police Commissioner Kuldip Sharma and Detection of Crime Branch PI M G Kaneriya -- leader of the team that killed Amdawadi -- were conspicuous by their absence at the Press conference called to announce one of the most significant encounters of the city police ever.
While sources in the office of the police commissioner said Sharma was busy attending meetings of the Ganeshotsava Samiti and others, the DCB police maintained that Kaneriya was following a lead in a case throughout the day.
Coupled with the apparent loopholes in the official version of the incident, the joint absence of the city's topmost police official and the key person involved in the incident, has caused many sceptics to wonder about the police role in the entire episode.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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