Two armed assailants shot dead in Telangana encounter suspected to be SIMI activists

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On the other hand, the Telangana Police had launched a massive manhunt after the duo opened fire at a police search party late on April 2 at a bus station in Suryapet in Nalgonda district, killing a constable and Home Guard. In the melee, the duo snatched a carbine and pistol and fled from the scene. Police said that they tried to stop a car on the highway and when it did not slow down, they fired at it also injuring one person in the car. Even as police spread the net wide to nab them, Nalgonda Police received a tip-off that two persons were moving around suspiciously near a dargah in Arvapalli near Suryapet. By the time police reached there last night, they had fled from there.

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DGP Sharma said that a constable on patrol duty spotted the duo on a motorcycle near Sitaramapuram early today morning and informed his colleagues. A police team gave them chase but the duo fired at them and escaped towards Janakipuram in Atmakur Mandal of Nalgonda. “On the way, they left the motorcycle and snatched another motorcycle from a person at gunpoint and fled. Two to three teams surrounded a place with thick bushes and vegetation where they were suspected to be hiding and when one team in a Tata Suma entered into the bushes, the duo opened fire killing Constable K Nagaraju, who was driving the vehicle. Nagaraju was married five months ago. Sub-Inspector P Siddhaiah of Atmakur Police Station who was sitting beside him took bullets in his chest and head while Circle Inspector Balgangi Reddy was injured in the hand. Police parties then exchanged fire with the assailants for nearly 30 minutes and shot them dead,’’ DGP Sharma said.

Cops have established that the duo were the same who attacked police at Suryapet. “The carbine that was missing was found here. We also found Hyderabad-Vijayawada bus tickets of that day,’’ an official said. All the injured policemen have been shifted to Kamineni Hospital in Hyderabad which released a bulletin stating that the condition of SI Siddhaiah was extremely critical. “There is one bullet in his chest and two bullets are lodged near his brain. His condition deteriorated fast and we resuscitated him after he was brought here,’’ a hospital official said.

While cops initially suspected that the duo was dacoits and highway robbers, the manner in which they exchanged fire with police and planned their escape gave rise to doubts about their identity. Police now believe that the duo is Zakir Badran and Ayub Aslam who escaped Khandwa Jail in Madhya Pradesh. On February 1 last year, they were involved in the looting of Rs 46 lakhs from SBI’s Chopaddandi branch in Karimnagar district. Four armed men had robbed the bank after locking up the branch manager at 9:30 am.

Two of them are suspected to be Zakir and Ayub. After the robbery, the three SIMI activists along with other associates were living in a rented house in Kazipada of Bijnore, UP, when a bomb that they were assembling went off in their room, injuring at least two of them. They took their injured colleague to a doctor who apparently refused first but treated him after they paid Rs 1 lakh. UP Police later traced the doctor and recovered Rs 96,000 cash from him. In the house where the bomb exploded, cops found some cash, labels and tags linking it to SBI’s Chopadandi Branch. The cash seized from the doctor who treated them was also from the SBI branch.