GUWAHATI: Continuing with their operations against criminals, the Assam Police gunned down three dacoits in a pre-dawn encounter on Sunday.
The incident occurred in western Assam’s Kokrajhar. Three other dacoits managed to escape.
“Prevention trumps a cure. Our underlying mantra...Upon being intercepted, the dacoits opened fire on police. In retaliatory fire by police, 3 dacoits from nearby districts were injured & later succumbed,” the state’s Director-General of Police Bhaskarjyoti Mahanta tweeted.
He said vehicles, tools, gas cutters, two pistols along with oxygen cylinders were recovered.
The six-member gang of dacoits had come to loot the Allahabad Bank branch but the police got a whiff of it and arrived at the spot.
On seeing the cops, the dacoits fled the scene in two vehicles, including a two-wheeler. A hot chase ensued an encounter at a nearby place in which three dacoits sustained grievous injuries. They succumbed to their wounds later.
The bodies were kept at a local hospital for autopsy. The police said they were trying to trace the three other dacoits who managed to flee.
Reacting to the incident, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said Assam would be made crime-free.
“We have to make Assam crime-free. Incidents of rape, murder, theft have to come to a stop. To ensure it, we have worked hard and we will work relentlessly,” Sarma told journalists.
Since he donned the CM’s mantle on May 10 this year, the Assam Police have shot dead 20 criminals. Thirty others sustained gunshot wounds.