Anil Dujana killed in encounter in UP: Who was the dreaded gangster?

Police said Dujana opened fire at them after being cornered. “Anil Dujana, a wanted criminal, was surrounded by our team led by Additional SP of UP STF Brijesh Singh, in a village in Meerut on Thursday afternoon. He fired at our team to escape and was killed in retaliatory firing,” UP STF’s Additional Directorate General of Police Amitabh Yash told PTI. But who was Dujana? Let’s take a closer look: Dujana was 36 years old. Dujana, born Anil Singh, was a resident of Noida’s Dujana village, as per The Times of India. As per Indian Express, Dujana was a Gurjar.

He has two brothers and a sister.

Dujana first came under the police scanner in 2002 when he murdered a man in Noida and stole Rs 5.5 lakh.  Dujana had 65 cases, including 18 of murder, lodged against him in western Uttar Pradesh districts and Delhi, according to police. According to the Times of India, cases of extortion, loot and land grabbing were registered against Dujana. [caption id=“attachment_12549032” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Anil Dujana had 65 criminal cases against him. News18[/caption] The first case against him was lodged at Kavinanagr police station of Ghaziabad in 2002 for murder and the latest was lodged at Dadri police station this year for alleged extortion. According to STF officials, Anil Dujana, in his initial years, used to work for the Sundar Bhati gang in western Uttar Pradesh. The Times of India reported that Dujana would illegally trade iron and steel bars and split a percentage of his profits with the Sundar Bhati gang. He later turned against Sundar Bhati and joined hands with gangster Naresh Bhati.

That caused a gang war that lasted nearly a decade.

Dujana firmed up his position in western UP after top members of both gangs including Naresh Bhati were killed during the war as well as by the police. “Dujana was connected to most of the big gangsters of west UP and was also close to Mukim Kala gang of Shamli, Balram Thakur gang of Bulandshahr, and around 50 more gangsters spread out in Meerut, Etawah, Noida, Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad, Hathras, etc. This had provided him with a strong network of criminals throughout the west UP,” additional SP Brijesh Singh told The Times of India. As per The Print, he was only arrested for the first time in 2012 in connection with the murder Muzaffarnagar trader Robin Tyagi. Dujana was first sent to Muzaffarnagar jail. Later, when his name came up in the murder of BJP’s Vijay Pandit, Dujana was shifted to Banda. Despite his arrests on several occasions, Dujana remained active even from behind bars, even planning and ordering the killings of many of his rivals, the officials said. Until February 2021, Dujana had spent nearly a decade in different prisons in Uttar Pradesh, as per The Print. Dujana’s name was on the list of the state’s most dreaded criminals. He was recently released from prison on bail in a murder case. Sources told NDTV he began threatening a key witness in the case and that Dujana had decided to murder the witness. The outlet reported that the police did not want to leave anything to chance after a slew of witnesses were recently killed. Police also said Dujana was trying to rebuild his gang. In a press statement, the Uttar Pradesh STF said Dujana was alone in the vehicle at the time of the incident. “According to preliminary information, Anil Dujana was going to meet some of his gang members. The SUV he was travelling in collided with an electric pole after being surrounded by the STF team,” Special DG (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar said. The STF claimed that Dujana was travelling from Baghpat to Muzaffarnagar to meet his gang members to plan and carry out a “big operation.” Four pistols and several cartridges were seized from the encounter spot, Kumar said. But Dujana’s lawyer Jitendra Nagar gave The Print a very different version. “He (Dujana) was set to surrender in Gautam Budh Nagar’s Surajpur court on Friday. Today, he was in Karkardooma court and had asked his lawyers to file a surrender application there as well. When he came out of Karkardooma court, he was picked up by the Meerut STF and shown to be killed in an encounter,” Nagar told The Print. “Today, Dujana had gone to the Karkardooma court and told his lawyers that he would return by 2 pm. He had also told his lawyers to file a surrender application in that court on his behalf. He was accompanied by two persons, Rakam Singh and Yogesh Ghitora, who have been detained by the STF. He had already filed a surrender application in the Surajpur court, which was set to come up on Friday,” the lawyer added. The encounter occurred on the day of polling for the first phase of the urban local body elections in the state. The Yogi Adityanath government’s major poll plank has been its “strict” handling of law and order. Days earlier, gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad’s son Asad Ahmad and his accomplice were shot dead in an exchange of fire with the Uttar Pradesh Police. A couple of days later, Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf Ahmad were gunned down in Prayagraj by three men while they were being escorted to a hospital by the police.

With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.