New Delhi: A person accused of raping a six-year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi was shot in the leg by police on Saturday (September 30) after he allegedly escaped from custody under the pretext of relieving himself while being taken for a medical examination.
Not only did the accused apparently manage to escape from police custody, but he also managed to find himself a country-made pistol in those two hours he was out of the police’s grip, according to a senior officer. After the accused person managed to get the gun, he ended up being traced and cornered by the police near a canal. In an alleged exchange of fire, he was shot by the police.
The accused, whose identity is not yet known, was on Friday arrested for allegedly raping a minor girl in the Sandi area of Hardoi, around 130 km north-west of the state capital Lucknow.
On Saturday, at around 9:30 am, he was being taken to a community health centre for a medical examination so that he could be produced before court, said police.
However, Hardoi Superintendent of Police Keshawa Chand Goswami said, the accused escaped from police custody under the excuse of reliving himself at a distance from the police. How the police allowed that, they have not explained.
A search operation was launched and at around 11:30 am, he was spotted near a bridge over a canal, said Goswami. The police had installed a blockade at the spot and the accused fired at the police team, said the officer.
Goswami said that in the two hours the accused was missing he managed to acquire a weapon from one of his associates. The officer, however, did not disclose who the associate was or if action would be taken against the person.
Goswami said that when the accused allegedly fired at the police, they fired back in retaliation and injured him.
A country-made weapon (tamancha) and cartridges were recovered from the accused, police said.
Some police personnel allegedly also incurred minor, non-firearm injuries.
Action would be taken against the police team from whose custody the accused had fled, said Goswami.
The shooting of the alleged accused in Hardoi follows a seemingly deliberate pattern established by the state police ever since the Adityanath-led BJP government came to power in 2017.
Police data from March 2017 to March 2023, when Adityanath had completed six years at the helm, shows that at least 183 persons were killed in incidents of alleged exchange of fire. The police terms these as “encounters”, a definition contested by human rights activists who insist these killings are planned extrajudicial murders and not spontaneous shootouts.
Till mid March 2023, a whooping 4,947 persons were injured in these incidents, most of them shot in the leg.
The Supreme Court had sought a comprehensive report from the Uttar Pradesh government on the 183 “encounters” in which people were killed. The government has refuted allegations that these encounters were “fake” or the deaths “state-sponsored”, The Times of India reported.
“The state is leaving no stone unturned to ensure a fair and impartial investigation into the incidents and the sweeping allegations against the state made therein are completely false and unjustified,” the government’s affidavit stated.