MUMBAI, May 12: In the second successive major hit in a span of barely five hours, the crime branch officers gunned down three notorious shooters of the Karachi-based ganglord Chotta Shakeel at Tardeo in south Mumbai on early Wednesday morning.The officers from the unit-II of the crime branch had received intelligence that five gangsters from the Shakeel gang were likely to assemble at Bodyguard Lane, near Willingdon Club at Tardeo from where they were to proceed to kill a top industrialist in the area.The gangsters were rushed to the Nair Hospital where they were declared dead before admission. Police said the deceased were identified as Ghulam Alam Hashmi alias Hamza Shaikh, Fazal Sheikh and Imtiyaz (23). The trio were identified to be the residents of Mumbra.The police have recovered two imported pistols, one imported revolver along with live and empty cartridges from the deceased. The trio were involved in several murder cases including that of a certain Yasin at Mumbra. According to the crime branch officers, they were affiliated to the Chhota Shakeel gang and had executed many a job at the gangster's instance.Just five hours prior to the encounter at Tardeo, the crime branch officers had gunned down three other Shakeel men in an encounter at Malad. The Malad trio comprised of Nilesh Kokam, a sharpshooter from the Top Ten Wanted list made by the crime branch.Wednesday morning's encounter was the 40th such of the year and so far 47 criminals have been killed by the police.
