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Gangster who escaped custody stole bike outside hospital: Cops
CCTV footage and statements of eyewitnesses, who identified Fajja from a set of pictures shown to them, confirmed that Fajja had escaped on a motorcycle, the police said on Saturday.
The investigation into Thursday’s shoot-out at Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital — in which one alleged criminal was shot dead and another injured, even as notorious gangster Kuldeep Maan alias Fajja managed to escape police custody during the incident — has revealed that Fajja was one of the two men who fled on a motorcycle after snatching it at gunpoint from a couple near Gate Number 7 of the hospital.
On Thursday, around noon, a four-member police team was escorting Fajja, a key confidant of jailed gangster Jitender Gogi, to the GTB hospital lock-up after his medical check-up, when a group of seven to eight men threw chilli power at the policemen and opened fire, leading to a commotion, during which Fajja fled. The policemen returned fire and killed one assailant, who was later identified as Ravi Malik, while another suspect, Ankesh, sustained two gunshot wounds to his abdomen.
CCTV footage and statements of eyewitnesses, who identified Fajja from a set of pictures shown to them, confirmed that Fajja had escaped on a motorcycle, the police said on Saturday. Police are yet to catch the gangster or his accomplices who were involved in his escape plot.
“Fajja rode the motorcycle, while his accomplice, who had come to release him along with the others, rode pillion. The associate, whose identity we are trying to establish, fired three bullets in the air to disperse the crowd near the hospital gate,” a police officer associated with the investigation said, requesting anonymity.
The police said CCTV footage of the escape route showed that the two fled towards Nand Nagri in east Delhi. They were last spotted on a CCTV camera in Nand Nagri chowk.
“Prime facie, it appears that the assailants had planned everything in advance and had also done extensive reconnaissance of the escape routes,” said a second investigator, who also asked not to be named.
Fajja belongs to Gogi’s gang, which recently joined hands with a gang led by Sandeep, alias Kala Jatheri, and the police suspect the involvement of both the groups in Fajja’s escape.
Malik, who died in the gunfight, belonged to Haryana’s Jind and had links with a key member of Jatheri’s gang who was recently arrested from Rajasthan’s Jaipur, the second investigator said.
When Fajja was arrested from Gurugram in March 2020, he carried a reward of ₹2 lakh on his arrest. He is involved in several cases of murder, extortion and robbery, among others.
Interrogations of the injured suspect Ankesh, who hails from Delhi’s Mundka, revealed that he his handler directed him to meet two men at a hotel in north-west Delhi. “Ankesh claims that he was not given the names of those men but only their physical and attire descriptions. He denies knowing Malik or meeting him before. We are verifying his statement,” the officer added.
