Videos showed teams of cops searching the fields at night with torches
A police constable was killed and a sub-inspector badly wounded after they were attacked by gangsters in Uttar Pradesh's Kasganj district on Tuesday night. One of the gangsters involved in the attack was shot dead in an encounter, Kasganj senior police officer Manoj Sonkar said, news agency PTI reported this morning.
Reports said the two - Constable Devendra and Sub-Inspector Ashok - were part of a small team of cops raiding an illegal liqour factory when they were attacked. In the chaos that followed, they were reportedly captured, stripped and thrashed with sticks.
The policemen who managed to escape raised the alarm and returned with a large force.
Videos from the scene show dozens of policemen, some with lathis and others with what appear to be rifles, combing the fields in the middle of the night.
Beams of light from torches sweep back and forth as the police call out to each other in a coordinated sweep of the area.
The missing policemen were finally located, with help from villagers, lying in a field near the Nagla Dhimar village; they had managed to escape - but not before sustaining serious injuries.
One of the videos shows a policeman - it is unclear if it is Devendra or Ashok - covered in blood and with his clothes ripped apart.
He can be heard exclaiming in pain as he is lifted up by his colleagues and taken to hospital.
Devendra, the constable, died of his injuries. The sub-inspector - Ashok - is in critical condition.
The office of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath tweeted that there was a "policy of zero tolerance towards crime and criminals" and that the guilty would be brought to account.
"UP government works on the policy of zero tolerance towards crime and criminals (and) without any compromise of law and order. Immediate and strict action will be taken against the concerned culprits," the tweet read.
In a similarly shocking incident, in July last year a team of policemen went to Bikru village in Kanpur district to arrest wanted gangster Vikas Dubey in an attempted murder case. However, they were ambushed after a local cop tipped off Dubey, and eight police personnel were killed.
After the massacre Dubey escaped with many of his men. A week later Dubey, who was tracked down and arrested from Madhya Pradesh, was shot dead while trying to escape from police custody after an accident to his transport vehicle.
As visuals of his bloodstained body in a hospital emerged, opposition leaders, lawyers and activists alleged that police had killed Dubey to prevent him revealing his links with powerful people.