Prohibitory orders in Greater Noida’s troubled areas after BJP leader’s murder

Vijay Pandit was gunned down by a group of four assailants

A day after the murder of BJP leader Vijay Pandit, prohibitory orders and heavy security deployment in Dadri on Sunday ensured that there was no repetition of violent protests which erupted on Saturday night.

Pandit was gunned down by a group of four assailants around 8-30 p.m. on Saturday. The bike-borne assailants shot the BJP leader dead when he was returning home from his brother’s shop at Bramhpuri in Dadri, 45 km from Delhi.

Later, a mob went on the rampage and set ablaze 16 vehicles near a police station in protest.

A large number of people who attended Pandit’s cremation on Sunday raised slogans against the administration.

The trouble-hit areas were cordoned off and Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code was imposed. Of the 17 police stations in Greater Noida, staff members from 10 were deployed in and around the troubled areas. Policemen from neighbouring districts of Bulandshahr, Meerut, Ghaziabad and Hapur were moved to Greater Noida.

A special task force under senior police official Ajay Sahdev has been set up to pursue the case. The police have detained several persons for questioning. Police sources said most of those detained were local goons and sharp-shooters, and that the available clues point towards the motive of the murder being extortion.

While Pandit’s family has alleged that the murder was a political conspiracy, the police have not found anything to corroborate it so far. Pandit’s brother Mukesh alleged that he had received threat calls in the past as well but the police had not taken any action. Two companies of the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary were deployed to assist the local police.