‘Police could have saved my husband’

While Agra IG, S K Gupta, confirmed the killing and the arrests, the wife of the victim said that she witnessed the incident as she was in the police vehicle escorting the ambulance. The wife also claimed that the police personnel who was with her refused to save her husband Rajesh Sharma, who died on the spot after sustaining three bullet wounds — two on his face and one in his stomach.

Police have confirmed that the ambulance, which left the jail at around 11 pm, was being accompanied by two police cars with five officials in each, apart from a doctor, two hospital staffers and two constables who were with Sharma.
Police said that Sharma was being taken to hospital after he was injured in the leg during a shootout inside Mathura jail when two members of a rival gang, identified as Deepak Verma and Akshay Solanki, fired at him. Verma and Solanki were trying to avenge the killing, allegedly by Sharma, of their associate Brijesh Marvi last September, police added.

“The plan to eliminate Rajesh was hatched by Gopal Yadav, an associate of Brijesh, who we have arrested,” Gupta said. “Gopal wanted to avenge Brijesh’s death. They first tried to do it inside jail premises but failed. They then made an attempt to kill him in the jail hospital but failed again. He then received information that Rajesh is being transferred to a hospital in Agra. It is then when they hatched a plan to attack the ambulance,” he added.

According to police, the constable who was arrested — Kailash Gupta — was posted inside Mathura jail and was found to have helped the attackers get ammunition and cash, including a pistol, Rs 1 lakh in cash and 16 bullets.
Gupta said that more arrests would follow in the case, including “a man who was constantly giving Gopal updates on the movement of the police”. But Sharma’s wife Kanak alleged that her husband could have been saved if the police personnel in the escort vehicles had taken action in time.

“When this Hyundai i10 car overtook the police vehicle I was in, I panicked,” Kanak told The Indian Express. “I knew that the life of my husband was in danger. I told the woman police officer sitting next to me that the car had been following us for a while and that it did not have a number plate, but she ignored me.”

Kanak claimed that after the men in the car forced the ambulance to stop, she saw “five of them get down, two were wearing a khaki uniform”. “All of them carried weapons, and two of them opened the door of the ambulance and started firing. I kept pleading with the police officers to help but they stepped out of the car only after the killers had left the spot,” she alleged.

Sharma’s father Udayveer Sharma, meanwhile, demanded a CBI enquiry into the killing and alleged that the police was involved in the plot. “We want a free and fair inquiry, we do not trust the state police. I have a 13 year old grandson and I am scared for his life,” he said.