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Cops gun down Babloo?s men

IN AN early morning swoop, the Kaiserbagh police gunned down two members of jailed don Babloo Srivastava during exchange of fire on Thursday. The duo has been identified as Vinod Soni and Prahlad Pandey.

Published on: Jan 6, 2006, 24:17:00 IST
PTI | By
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IN AN early morning swoop, the Kaiserbagh police gunned down two members of jailed don Babloo Srivastava during exchange of fire on Thursday.

HT Image
HT Image

The duo has been identified as Vinod Soni and Prahlad Pandey.

Soni was carrying a reward of Rs 25,000 after he had shot dead a PWD contractor Jagmohan at Ambikapur in Chattisgarh on June 25 this year. About merely four cases had been pending against Prahlad in the city. None of the cases against Prahlad included any heinous crime.

The police were keeping a close watch on movement of Soni and Prahlad for last one month. The duo was engaged in issuing threats to businessmen for extortion referring names of Babloo Srivastava and Guddu Rai (his associate). Soni had killed a contractor in Chattisgarh at the instance of Guddu Rai who got contract for the killing.

Prahlad, a youngster and native of Chitahri, Sitapur, used to supervise the taxi business of slain don Ajit Singh earlier. He came into contact of kidnapping kingpin Babloo Srivastava after Ajit Singh’s murder. While Babloo was contesting parliament election Prahlad was introduced to Bihar-based gangster Guddu Rai.

Special Task Force (STF) sleuths had arrested Prahlad along with Guddu Rai and others an year back and the cops had slapped Gangster Act on gang members.

On Wednesday night, the cops were tipped-off that Soni and Prahlad would leave the city for a contract killing. Following surveillance of phone the cops came to know that the criminals duo would move through Kaiserbagh.

The police team led by CO Kaiserbagh Rajesh Sahni laid a trap near Nayagaon locality. It was around 3 a.m when two youths were seen riding a motorcycle.

Seeing the police the youths tried to drive the motorcycle back when the police team ran towards them. The duo accelerated the mobike and the cops chased them.

Finding the policemen close to them the youth riding on pillion opened fire threatening the cops to let them go. However, the cops retaliated the firing killing two of them on the spot near Ashok Nagar locality on La Touche Road..

Two country-made pistols and cartridges were recovered from the person of the criminals.

SSP Ashutosh Pandey said that the motorcycle the criminals were riding on was robbed from Rajnish Yadav of Niwajganj near Nari Shiksha Niketan College on Wednesday. Pandey further said that a piece of paper found from Soni’s pocket referring about contract killing of an MLA.

The letter also referred about an advance payment of Rs 25000 for the killing.

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