Booze smuggler caught after Bollywood chase

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 22: Assistant Sub-Inspector Ram Kumar and head constables Ram Prakash and Swarup Singh had seen cops chasing robbers a...

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 22: Assistant Sub-Inspector Ram Kumar and head constables Ram Prakash and Swarup Singh had seen cops chasing robbers all the time in the movies. Yesterday, they chased a group of smugglers on the Najafgarh Road up to Haryana, entered into a gunfight and won. The ASI and his team caught one of the smugglers. Now they say movies are not too unreal.

Sources say the policemen blundered only once during their chase, when they hit a Border Security Force personnel. The policemen, however, claim that the liquor smugglers knocked down the BSF inspector when they were escaping.

Ram Kumar and the head constables were patrolling the Najafgarh area in southwest Delhi around 5.20 p.m. yesterday, when they spotted a white Maruti car with a Delhi registration number and tinted glasses speeding down the highway.

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They signalled the vehicle to stop, but the car driver ignored the policemen and sped away. Ram Kumar and his colleagues got into their PCR Maruti Gypsy immediately and gave chase. Thirty minutes later, after they had entered the Haryana border, the policemen lost track of the car for a few minutes.

They found it near village Siddipur Loha in Bahadurgarh district. The vehicle was lying abandoned in a paddy filed, its wheels stuck in the mud.

When the policemen inspected the vehicle, they found two gunny bags containing pouches of liquor illicit liquor. With the help of the villagers, they managed to remove the car from the field. Just as they were about to leave for Bahadurgarh Police Station, a red Maruti van, also with a Delhi registration number, came from Bahadurgarh and stopped near them. Ram Kumar says five heavily built men got out of the car.

While three of them attacked the policemen, the others managed to get into the abandoned white Maruti car. Ram Kumar and the constables, meanwhile, continued to grapple with their assailants. They managed to overpower one of them, later identified aas Arun Kumar, a resident of Najafgarh.

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The other two wriggled out and joined their accomplices in the white Maruti. The policemen say that when the group in the white Maruti were escaping, they hit a BSF inspector and broke his leg. The inspector hails from Siddipur Loha village and had come on a vacation.

Head Constable Ram Kumar then opened fire, aiming at the tyres of the white Maruti, in an attempt to stop the car. The occupants of the car retaliated and managed to escape.

The Delhi Police team, nevertheless, held on to their captive, Arun Kumar. They also managed to seize the red Maruti van. Arun Kumar and the van were later handed over to the Bahadurgarh police.

Special Commissioner (security and operations) R.S. Gupta said all the PCR personnel from Delhi will be rewarded for their efforts, “especially for opening fire only to hit the tyres of the fleeing vehicle” and avoid risking the lives of the villagers.