LUCKNOW: On the run after allegedly committing three murders in western UP district of Bijnor, a 33-year-old man shot himself dead while trying to escape the police net late on Friday night. Police sources said Ashwani Kumar alias ‘Jonny Dada’, who was absconding after the murders, had posted multiple text messages, photographs and TikTok videos saying he was harming people to avenge his insult at their hands.
According to police officials, some of his posts read: 'I will go for the kill if I am annoyed', 'My honour is more important to me than death,' among many others. ‘I am going to leave this life,’ another message read.
Kumar had allegedly shot dead Chandra Bhushan, the 24-year-old son of a local BJP leader Bhim Singh Kashyap and his 25-year-old cousin Krishna, after inviting them for a booze party in Bijnor’s Badhapur on September 26.
The police sources added that after two murders, the killer allegedly shot dead a former air hostess Nikita Sharma, 27, after barging into her house on September 30. Kumar was hiding in the forest area of Daulatabad ever since.
To trace the accused, the district police had taken assistance from Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and Rapid Action Force (RAF). They had launched a massive combing operation in the forest area but failed to trace Kumar.
Bijnor’s Superintendent of Police (SP), Sanjiv Tyagi, confirmed that Jonny Dada shot himself dead with a revolver he was carrying while travelling in the state-run bus to Uttarakhand’s Dehradun in an attempt to escape.
A team of district police personnel had been carrying out extensive checking of the roadways buses on the highway. During such a drive, the team intercepted a roadways bus on the highway in Badhapur area and spotted a suspicious person sitting on the front seat next to the driver around 12.45am on Saturday. As the suspicious person had covered his face, on being asked by the police team to uncover it, he took out a revolver and shot himself on his right temple before the cops could do anything, the SP added.
A senior police official claimed that Jonny Dada’s aggressive TikTok videos posted on Facebook under the name of Aditya Rajpoot had created terror among those familiar to him in Bijnor. The alleged killer had a bounty of Rs 50,000 for his capture. “Everybody who had even a small dispute with him was suspecting himself to his next target,” said the police official.