Ashwin Naik man killed in encounter

MUMBAI, November 19: The series of encounters continued today when a member of the Ashwin Naik gang, Vishwanath Shetty, was shot dead by the...

MUMBAI, November 19: The series of encounters continued today when a member of the Ashwin Naik gang, Vishwanath Shetty, was shot dead by the police at Jogeshwari (east) this evening.

Two unidentified men were speeding on a motorcycle (MMK 301) along the Vikhroli-Jogeshwari Link Road under the jurisdiction of MIDC police at around 7.20 pm. When a police squad (attached to Saki Naka police station) which was in a patrol jeep, asked them to stop, they refused to do so and instead sped away.

This made the police party suspicious, and as the cops chased the two persons, Shetty, the pillion rider, turned around and fired two rounds on the jeep. In the shootout that followed, police fired six rounds at the gangsters.

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Shetty, who was hit by the bullets, fell off the motorcycle, but his associate managed to escape under the cover of darkness, police said. Police have recovered a 9 mm pistol and three live rounds from the scene of the incident.

According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (crime), Param BirSingh, Shetty, a member of the Ashwin Naik gang, was named in a murder case in the western suburbs. Though he was not among the top men of the Ashwin Naik gang, he was nevertheless extremely active in the Jogeshwari area, Singh added.

The police officers who shot the gangster are inspector A Gathade and sub-inspector C Khanvilkar, both attached to the Sakinaka police station. It is still not clear what the two gangsters were doing in the area.

Ten gangsters have been killed in police encounters in the last nine days.This year, 28 members of the underworld have so far been shot dead in 20 separate encounters in the metropolis.