The Assam police killed two alleged ‘dacoits’ in an encounter in western Assam’s Goalpara district on August 28 night.
This is the 13th such encounter in which a total of 23 declared criminals of various shades have died.
According to the district police, Saturday’s incident happened between Lakhipur and Agia when a car tried to ram through a police barricade.
“The Goalpara police chased the vehicle across the areas under four police stations while being shot at by the criminals [inside the car]. But the police got the better of them,” the State’s Director-General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said.
Two of the criminals identified as Rafajuddin and Basit Ali died in the shootout while one Rashidul Islam was injured, he said.
“We are on the lookout of the fourth accomplice. All of them have prior cases of dacoity against them. A gun and the car they were travelling in have been recovered,” the DGP said.
The first encounter between the armed forces and criminals was on May 23 when six members of the outlawed Dimasa National Liberation Army were gunned down in Karbi Anglong district. This happened 13 days after Himanta Biswa Sarma took charge as the Chief Minister.
Two members of the extremist United Revolutionary People’s Front were killed in the second encounter on June 20, also in Karbi Anglong. Bubu Konwar wanted for several murders and thefts was shot dead in Sivasagar district on June 23.
On July 2, Kanwaldeep Singh Sindhu, a railway inspector-turned-criminal wanted in a kidnapping case, was killed in Karbi Anglong. A cattle smuggler Chaurangi Syni was killed in Kokrajhar district that day.
Between July 3 and 11, encounters with police claimed the lives of criminal Bhadreswar Timung in Kamrup district, cattle smuggler Mohammed Akhtar Raja in Dibrugarh district, murderer Abdul Khalek in Chirang district and dacoit Joynal Abedin in Nagaon district.
August 7 saw the police gun down drug peddler Khairul Islam in Nagaon district followed by dacoit Asa Babu in Darrang district (August 11), bank robbers Monuar Hussain, Aminul Hoque and Daula Sheikh in Kokrajhar district (August 22) and arms smuggler Nurul Islam in Karimganj district (August 23).
In some of the cases, the criminals “snatched a weapon from the police” and tried to shoot their way out of captivity.
