Hyderabad shooting: Constable who tried to kidnap top pharma director, arrested

In a sensational incident on Wednesday, the man who had opened fire at the director of Aurobindo Pharma with a stolen AK-47 has been arrested, police has said. The man, according to a report in NDTV, is an ex-policeman who was part of the Greyhounds – an elite anti-naxal commando force. Police found Obulesh while he was on a bus to Anantapur which is 300km from Hyderabad. According to Zee News, three others have been arrested in relation to the incident. The sources have confirmed that the suspects will be produced in front of the media around Thursday afternoon. [caption id=“attachment_1812361” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Obulesh, who is now a constable with the Armed Reserve, opened fire at Nityananda Reddy in a bid to kidnap him, the police had confirmed. Reddy was returning to his car on Wednesday morning when the attempt had been made. The 56-year-old director of Aurobindo Pharma had escaped unhurt and to counter the attack had fired a few rounds from his pistol, reports said. According to reports, after shooting at Reddy, the constable fled, leaving behind a backpack and a polythene bag from which the police had recovered a ’newly-purchased’ shirt. The Times of India report added that the police traced the bag back to a garment shop where after checking the CCTV footage Reddy identified the shooter. In a detailed investigation, the police found that the AK-47 rifle acquired from the scene of crime was a stolen one which once belonged to Greyhounds. The rifle “went missing after a team returned to the base at Gandipet in Hyderabad after a combing operation on the AP-Chhattisgarh border on December 26 last year.” Obulesh, a 1998 batch Andhra Pradesh State Police constable, was sent back to the “parent organisation” and he served the  Armed Reserve for a while. The TOI report said that currently Obulesh is serving the excise department. The police nabbed Obulesh on the Bangalore-bound bus after tracking his cellphone on Thursday.