Haridwar police have on Tuesday rouded up two sharpshooters who had allegedly come to the city to kill two locals as part of a contract known as supari. Police said they are worried over Sundar Bhati gang based in western UP having spread its tentacles in the district following the footseps of two other nororious gangs known as Jeeva and Rathi gangs.
Police have recovered one pistol, two country-made guns and a car from the arrested duo. Police are also on the lookout for two other sharp shooters who are now on the run. A police officer said that the mobile phones seized from the duo might lead to the arrest of other members of the gang.
When the traffic police stopped the vehicle the gangsters were in as part of regular checking drive three of them fled while the fourth identified as Nitin was rounded up. A traffic police employee Pravesh Khatri said that some arms were recovered from the car. The driver of the car was arrested too, he added. It is learnt from police sources that Nitin alias KK, 21, had become a criminal when he was 17.
Sources further said that the shooters were engaged in the operation in lieu of Rs 30 lakh by a Meerut resident Sonu Rathi. A part of the contract money had been given to them in advance.
SP city Mamta Vohra while revealing the case in Kankhal police station on Tuesday said that police nabbed two sharp shooters of notorious Sundar Bhati gang, while two others Sonu Rathi and Rahul Rathi who are from Greater Noida are still absconding. “Nitin said while being grilled that they were engaged to bump off Raj Kumar Gupta and Surendra Gupta, both from Haridwar,” she said.
However, police insiders said that Nitin might have been trying to conceal the names of the persons they were sent to kill. “Maybe, they were engaged to kill a person more important than the two as named by him during the interrogation. We are verifying things,” said a police officer privy to the case.