Botched raid: Uttarakhand probe team recovers non-service gun

The police team probing Wednesday’s shootout at Bhullar farmhouse in Uttarakhand’s Bharatpur, in which the wife of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader was killed and six Uttar Pradesh policemen were injured, has recovered a weapon that was not used by the police from the scene of the crime — the three weapons recovered before this were all used by police.

Late on Wednesday night, a team of UP police from Moradabad had crossed over the border with Uttarakhand reportedly in pursuit of mining mobster Zafar Ali. The chase had culminated in a shootout at Bhullar farmhouse in Udham Singh Nagar district and led to the death of Gurpreet Bhullar, the wife of local BJP leader Gurtaj Bhullar. According to UP police, six of its personnel were injured in the shootout and Bhullar had died in the cross-fire.

The Uttarakhand police has booked 10-12 UP policemen under several sections, including murder, while the UP police has filed a case against Jafar and at least 30 unidentified people for taking hostage, beating, firing at and deterring public servants from performing duties.

Speaking to HT on Sunday, US Nagar senior superintendent of police, Manjunath TC, told HT: “We recovered four weapons, including one non-service, live and empty cartridges, a handcuff, a laptop, and broken mobile phones. The UP police vehicle was badly damaged and its tires were deflated.”

A forensic department official who visited the site had earlier pegged the number of weapons recovered at three. “Except for the three service pistols and a few cartridges, they didn’t recover any other weapon from the crime scene,” the official had said.

Earlier reports from UP police had mentioned that only three weapons were found at the spot.

Manjunath added that they had written to Gurtaj Bhullar for CCTV footage from the farmhouse but he had not responded so far. “Footage of the CCTV cameras installed at the farmhouse would be crucial for us. We have served two notices to the complainant (Gurtaj Bhullar) to provide us with the footage, but he is yet to respond,” said the SSP.

He further said evidence was still being collected from the farmhouse.

“There is still much evidence present at the spot... We are waiting for the forensic results and final post-mortem report. It’s like any other investigation for me. We should not jump to conclusions. Our main focus is to find out who fired the shot (that killed Bhullar) and from which weapon. We will reach the bottom of the matter,” he said.

Police are also yet to recover the bullet that killed Gurpreet. An officer privy to the investigation said: “There is a maximum possibility that the bullet was fired from a close range.”