LUCKNOW: As the crime graph soars with each passing day, even policemen are not safe in the wild west of UP. In a macabre exhibition of brutality, assailants killed a senior sub-inspector (SSI) of police by slitting his throat and chopping off his fingers in Bijnor district, 450 km from Lucknow, late Friday night.
After killing Sahjor Singh Malik, the officer in charge of the Balawali police chowki, the miscreants threw his body in a field by the roadside and decamped with his service revolver.
Sources in the district police said they suspect the hand of the mining mafia in the gruesome killing.
Sub-inspector Malik had been at the Balawali police chowki, 20 km from Mandawar police station on the UP-Uttarkhand border along the Ganga, for the past one year. He was returning to Balawali chowki from Mandawar police station on a motorcycle when he was intercepted near a deserted glass factory.
Police were tipped off by local villagers about his bike parked outside Gopalpur village. As per one bystander account, the inspector’s body was lying in a field by the roadside with his throat slit and fingers chopped off. There were injury marks all over the body, indicating that the SSI had a scuffle with his killers.
Upon receiving information of the killing, district magistrate Jagatraj and superintendent of police Atul Sharma rushed to the spot with a heavy contingent of police. Malik's body was sent for a post-mortm examination, and an FIR was lodged against unknown miscreants. Detective teams were set up and a massive manhunt was launched in Bijnor and adjoining districts to nab the culprits.
According to sources, Sahjor Singh, who hailed from Lisad village of Shamli district in western UP, used to stay in his official residence on the chowki premises while his family was away in Kankarkheda locality of Meerut.
The area where the gruesome killing took place is along the Ganga, and illegal sand mining is common in this place.