Director-General of Police Anurag Sharma has confirmed that the two assailants who were killed in a shootout with the police at Janakipuram in Nalgonda district early on Saturday were active members of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in Madhya Pradesh and involved in a dozen terror activities in that State.
In a release here, Mr. Sharma said the dead were identified with the help of a team of police from Madhya Pradesh that arrived in Nalgonda and checked their fingerprints and facial features. They were identified as Aijajuddeen, a native of Kareli village in Narsinghpur district, and Mohd Aslam, alias Bilal, of Ganesh Talai village of Khandwa district, both in Madhya Pradesh.
They were members of the Abu Faisal gang which committed heinous crimes, including bank robberies, and had once fired at a judge in Ujjain. The two were also suspected to be involved in robberies in Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Maharasthra, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana and the blast on the Bangalore-Guwahati Express at the Chennai railway station in May last year.
Among the banks Aijajuddeen and Aslam looted were the Narmada Grameena Bank at Dewas (Rs. 1.25 lakh), Bank of India at Vijay Mundi Diwas (Rs. 9.5 lakh), Canara Bank at Itarsi (Rs. 80,000), Punjab National Bank at Ratlam and State Bank of India at Indore. They had also struck at the Manappuram Gold Finance at Bhopal Talkies, looting 10 kg of gold.
They opened fire on a judge, Bherulal Tak, at Nagda in Ujjain and also BJP leader Pramod Tiwari in Khandwa. They murdered police constable Sitaram Yadav in Khandwa.
The two were also suspected in the heist at the Choppadandi branch of the SBI in Karimnagar when they carried away Rs. 46 lakh.
Aijaz and Aslam had opened fire on a police team at the Suryapet bus station in Nalgonda on Wednesday night, resulting in the death of constable Lingaiah and home guard Mahesh. They injured an inspector, a constable and a local politician going in a car nearby. They fled with the carbine belonging to the police and were on the run ever since.
On Saturday morning, the two were intercepted by a police party at Janakipuram in the same district. They opened fire in a bid to escape, killing a constable and injuring a probationary sub-inspector who is still unconscious in hospital. But, the police retaliated and shot them dead.
