In a major breakthrough right before Good Friday, Jharkhand Police succeeded in arresting one of the most wanted gangsters operating from Ranchi, luvkush Sharma aka Abhishek Priyadarshi on Thursday morning from Chandan Nagar of Hugli area in West Bengal.
Sharma, prime accused of opening fire at PWD Assistant Engineer Samarendra Pratap Singh on November 23, 2015 after the latter refused to give Rs 1 crore of extortion money to him, was synonym of murders, extortions and threatening and was carrying a bounty of Rs one lakh on his head. He was also required in 15 other cases registered against him in different police stations of the city, mainly of extortion, murder, threatening and similar crimes.
SSP Kuldeep Dwivedi said on Friday that a special team, comprising Senior Inspector Ajay Kumar Verma (Police Centre, Ranchi) and Vikas Kumar (Pithoria police station), Constable Shah Faizal, Digambar, Ranveer Kerketta and driver constable Dinesh Gorai and Deepak Kumar, monitored by City SP Kishore Kaushal with technical assistance from DySP Vikas Chandra Srivastava, was camping in Chandan Nagar area from April 6 soon after the police got a tip off about Sharma’s hide out there. The team succeeded to nab Sharma on Thursday morning near Railway Station from an e-rickshaw.
“As many as 10 mobile phones, 26 SIM cards and four ATM cards have been recovered from Sharma’s 2BHK flat where he had been living for around a year. He has admitted to have used Bengaluru, Chennai, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Dhanbad and Jamshedpur also as his hideouts before he moved to Kolkata with support from one of his friends Pankaj who is also said to be a resident of Bariatu area in Ranchi. We have also come to know that Pankaj has surrendered in court 4-5 days ago against a case of forgery on him,” said Dwivedi on Friday.
Notably, Sharma had demanded Rs 1 crore from Samarendra Pratap Singh as extortion in November 2015. After Singh refusing to fulfill his demands, he opened fire on Singh’s house to terrorise the engineer. But once Singh ignored Sharma’s fresh terrorising activities, the gangster had opened fire on the engineer. Fortunately Singh survived after complex medical surgeries.
Sharma was also a prime accused in murder of Anuj Nath Swarnkar on Circular Road in February 2015. In July 15, 2015, Sharma had ringed Mata Developers and Construction owner Vinod Kumar for extortion of Rs 1 lakh with a threatening that Kumar would be shot within a week if demands remained unfulfilled. The demands remained unfulfilled and Sharma opened fire on Kumar on July 17, in which the victim succeeded to make a close shave. In yet another case of extortion, Sharma had asked NIBM Coaching Centre Director Manoj Kumar Gupta to give Rs 50,00,000 in mid-September last year.